KANSAS CITY, Mo. - It is incredibly rare that a team records two safeties in one game, but for one player? The feat is even rarer. Two sacks leading to safeties is exactly what RJ Randolph Jr. accomplished Saturday against Andrew College en route to a 46-21 victory and earned him NAIA National Defensive Player of the Week honors. 

"First off, all glory to God. Without Him, nothing's possible," Randolph said. "I'm shocked. We've been going through a lot of adversity during this year, especially with the season we've been having, but our defensive coordinator [Jeremy Perkovich] plus our head coach [Dayne Brown] telling us to keep the main thing, the main thing, and stay focused all year and keep getting better and improve; 1-0 every week. That goes with practice, to games, to anything we do every day of the week."

Randolph, a native of Pensacola, Fla., recorded the first of two safeties to make it 30-0 early in the second quarter, reading the play action perfectly to bring down the quarterback in his own end zone. 

He picked up his second midway through the fourth quarter to break a 21-0 run from the Fighting Tigers who had trimmed a 37 point lead down to two possessions by shedding a tackle and pursuing the Andrew signal caller back into the end zone before bringing him down. 

"After I got the 1st one, you know, I was feeling the juice or whatever, and I came to the side and the boys were like, 'you're having a career day!'" Randolph said. He downplayed it to his teammates initially to remain focused on the task at hand. "'It's just like the 1st, 2nd quarter. Let's keep going.'" 

Randolph noticed patterns and found the areas to exploit. "Just realizing how they were blocking me and stuff. Sometimes I'd line up on the edge or I'll move around, you know, just trying to figure out stuff that's going on, and see where they're pointing me out. I knew on the second one, but I'm thankful for the three that I got, but the one in the end zone, to cap it off, made me excited. I knew at that moment [it was a special day]. My teammate Kion [Hinson], he was hyping me up with it. It was special. I always remember. I always remember."

Randolph's contributions didn't stay with just the rare feat. He also forced a fumble four minutes into the game to give the Eagles a short field for a touchdown drive that saw Faulkner up 14-0 after just two plays offensively. He was part of a defensive and special teams effort that saw Faulkner up 37-0 with just 16 plays of offense. 

Randolph is the first Eagles since 2023 to earn a national weekly accolade and represents the eighth different Faulkner player to win a similar award since the program's inception in 2007.