Patriots All-Pro Stephon Gilmore is the Las Vegas favorite for Defensive Player of the Year

Interesting deployment of the Black Knight defense from Bengals’ #1 wideout Tyler Boyd here:

“Your arm’s off!”

“No it isn’t!”

Let’s pro-con this situation:

PRO: if true, you’re better than the best cornerback in football

CON: also, if true, either you’re missing a lot of balls, your $96,000,000.00 quarterback isn’t good enough to get you the rock when you’re winning the majority of matchups, or both.

And speaking of the best cornerback in football, a time machine would be awesome for many, many reasons, but especially to travel back in time to, say, Week 4 of 2017 and tell ourselves that the $65 million dollar man that made me tweet this after a horrendous penalty that set up the Carolina Panthers for a game-winning field goal was going to be just fine:

More than fine, actually - the corner who can even shut down Jalen Ramsey by casually noting that zone guys tend to have a lot more energy is now a two-time Pro Bowler in his time in New England, took home All-Pro honors last year, and right as the regular season winds down, Vegas says Gilly’s got the best shot at winning NFL Defensive Player of the Year, and rightfully so.

OddsShark has Gilmore at -300, which is both easily the favorite to take home the hardware at the end of the season and better than a slew of elite names that have many, many more sacks than him.

(relax, the sacks thing is a joke, since that seems to be 98% of what DPOY voters care about these days)

Our fearless leader Bernd Buchmasser got into Stephon’s case for Defensive Player of the Year on Sunday, so hit that up for the details on how Gilmore’s been owning anyone unfortunate enough to line up across from him, but even if you don’t gamble, this is people voting with their money that, and I can’t stress this enough, Gilmore is the best defensive player in the sport this season.

Not too bad for the straw that stirs the drink on defense for the oldest team in football.