While the UFL is firmly entrenched in its offseason until its March 2026 kickoff date, the 2025 NFL season is well underway, with six weeks already in the books. And so far this term, the ordered march of preseason projections has given way to a league turned upside down.
Heading into the season, the bookies made the Baltimore Ravens one of the favorites for Super Bowl glory, primarily thanks to the dazzling brilliance of two-time MVP Lamar Jackson. However, the sensational quarterback has been downed with an injury for the past few weeks, and he has taken the Maryland outfit’s hopes to the treatment room with him. In their place, a slew of unheralded dark horses have risen.
For ten long years, when someone asked which NFL team has the most Super Bowl wins, you’d answer with the Pittsburgh Steelers. Since 2018, the Black and Yellow have had to share their throne with the New England Patriots, but if the opening six weeks are anything to go by, the Steel City’s finest look like contenders once more. With the veteran Aaron Rodgers rejuvenated under center after an ill-fated two years with the Jets, the Steelers currently sit 4-1 and have an outside chance of leaving San Francisco next February with a record-breaking seventh Lombardi.
But it isn’t just Pittsburgh who have shone throughout the opening weeks of the season. Several former UFL superstars have also been on song, defying non-existent expectations to become some of the most crucial players on their respective teams. Here are three of them.
Brandon Aubrey (K, Dallas Cowboys)
If football games are chess matches decided by inches, the kicker is the game’s nerveless grandmaster. Enter Brandon Aubrey, the unflappable marksman whose road to NFL spotlight has been as calculated as his approach to a pressure-cooker field goal. In 2022 and 2023, donning Stallions red, Aubrey put on a UFL clinic—85% field goal accuracy, a knack for 50-yard heroics, and back-to-back championships, confirming his status as one of the best kickers in the business.
Dallas plucked him from the UFL ranks expecting steadiness, but Aubrey has delivered something closer to clinical dominance. Five weeks into 2025, his ledger is flawless: 8-for-8 on field goals, 93.8% on extra points. But stats only paint half the picture. His 64-yard missile to down the Giants in Week 2—tying an NFL record—turned the tide of a division slugfest, while a 65-yarder seven days later was less a kick than an exclamation mark for his ever-expanding resume.
Aubrey’s impact goes beyond numbers. In a conference tight enough to squeeze points from every hidden corner, his ability to fire in field goals from 70 yards out gives the Cowboys a weapon that no one else in the NFL has. Can a kicker tilt a playoff race? In 2025, Dallas hopes that the answer is resoundingly, “Yes.”
KaVontae Turpin (WR/Returner, Dallas Cowboys)
Flip the field, flip the script: that’s the gospel of KaVontae Turpin, a chaos agent with a thirst for the spectacular. Before he was dazzling JerryWorld alongside the aforementioned Aubrey, the wide receiver had already rewritten the UFL’s predecessor league record books—1,000+ all-purpose yards for the Generals, 2022 league MVP, professional highlight reel. In space, he is a hunting cheetah; in traffic, a slippery escape artist.
The Cowboys have fashioned him into football’s version of a supercharged Swiss Army knife. Ostensibly a return specialist, Turpin is everywhere—slot receiver, gadget play catalyst, kickoff assassin. Through five weeks, he’s rung up 11 grabs for 159 yards and a pivotal touchdown, but it’s the art and violence of the return game where his fingerprints are most indelible. Week 4’s 175 kickoff yards against Green Bay was less a statistic, more an act of larceny against the Packers’ coverage units. Over 500 return yards already, and every jaunt packs the threat of six points.
The Dallas offense, as robust as any in the NFC, leans on Turpin’s ability to warp defenses and open lanes for CeeDee Lamb and Dak Prescott’s artillery arm. Even his week 5 absence with a minor knock couldn’t erase his value. Turnover on special teams? Opponents dread it; for Dallas, it’s loaded dice.
John Fassel, Cowboys’ special teams coordinator, is bullish, and rightfully so. If an opposition doesn’t have Turpin in their pregame nightmares, they will by halftime. Schematic versatility, straight-line speed, magnetic vision—the ingredients that once made Turpin the darling of the UFL are now Dallas’s secret sauce.
Jalen Redmond (EDGE, Minnesota Vikings)
In a league where pass rushers dine on dreams, UFL grads rarely feast. Jalen Redmond is the exception—a disruptor forged in Arlington, now turning frustration into devastation for NFC North quarterbacks. His 2024 UFL tape is the stuff of front-office legend: 4.5 sacks, 18 tackles for loss, and half a season’s worth of havoc-making. Every snap, a case study in controlled violence; every down, an audition for the NFL elite.
Minnesota’s Brian Flores brought Redmond into a defense at a crossroads—part youth movement, part desperate need for an edge spark. Redmond’s response? Relentless burst off the edge, a 40% snap share, and production that mocks his “rotational” label: 13 tackles, three sacks, a tone-setting forced fumble, and a Week 4 tour de force vs. Atlanta that left Falcons offensive tackles grasping at air. His advanced metrics impress just as much—PFF’s 89.8 grade in Week 3 ranks among the best league-wide for edge defenders.
On a roster breaking in sophomore QB J.J. McCarthy in his first season as a starter and penciled in for a tentative 9-8 finish, the Vikings are building from their defense out, and Redmond is at the vanguard. He turns chaos into structure, collapsing pockets, freeing up blitzing linebackers, and turning second-and-long into third-and-impossible scenarios. Forty sacks as a unit isn’t a fantasy; with Redmond’s unique combo of bend and ferocity—honed and refined against the UFL’s best—Minnesota’s defense is the bulwark against offensive growing pains.
