Denver Broncos linebacker Alex Singleton is on a historic streak.
Singleton earned the AFC Player of the Month award for October after recording 68 tackles. He is on pace to break the NFL record for total tackles in a season. It is a significant honor for the 11th-year pro, who battled through a season-ending injury in 2024 and a cancer diagnosis in 2025.
“It's sick,” Singleton said of the honor at a Thursday press conference. “It's cool. Obviously it's not just me. It's everyone else on our defense.”
“Like I've said all the time, it's a privilege to just get to be around the 10 other guys on the field and then \[defensive coordinator Vance Joseph\], \[inside linebackers coach Jeff\] Schmedding, all those guys that really put in all the hours and all the work. But yeah, it's awesome. It's really cool.”
In October alone, Singleton racked up 54 total tackles, 28 solo; four tackles for loss, four quarterback hits, and a sack. Including the Broncos’ win over the Kansas City Chiefs on Nov. 1, he has totaled 68 tackles, 34 solo; five TFLs; five QB hits, two sacks, and a pass defense.
This season, Singleton has 101 total tackles—19 more than the second-place tackler, Tennessee Titans rookie LB Anthony Hill Jr.—and 49 solo tackles; five TFLs; six QB hits; two sacks; and two batted passes.
Singleton offered a deeper look at the raw numbers, saying the quantity of stops doesn't necessarily matter as much as the quality.
“It depends when they are, where they are in a game, situations, all that stuff,” he said of what defines a “good” tackle.
“I told you guys, whatever, two weeks ago, like the Kansas City game, week one, is a lot of cleaning up stuff, and then you're just getting them. I would say the last seven weeks, our entire defense, it's just, every tackle has been a guy making a play. There hasn't been a lot of mistakes that we've made in the last two months. So, it's just a lot of making plays. So then, those are those are good ones.”
Singleton’s 101 tackles in eight games is historic. If he keeps it up over a full 17-game season, he would finish with 214.6 tackles, breaking the single-season record set by Tampa Bay Buccaneers linebacker Hardy Nickerson in 1993.
The Seattle Seahawks signed Singleton as an undrafted free agent in 2015. He was cut in September, then signed by the New England Patriots, then cut after just a week.
The Minnesota Vikings signed him that December and cut him in April 2016. The Calgary Stampeders drafted Singleton with the sixth overall pick in the 2016 CFL Draft.
He spent three years in the CFL, won the CFL Most Outstanding Defensive Player Award in 2017, and helped lead the Stampeders to a Grey Cup championship in 2018.
He returned to the NFL with the Philadelphia Eagles in 2019. He played three seasons in Philadelphia as a special teamer and substitute. He signed with the Broncos on a one-year deal in 2022; the team gave him a three-year extension in 2023; that same year, he hit a career-high 177 tackles.
Singleton’s 2024 campaign lasted just three games: during the Broncos’ Week 3 win over the Buccaneers, Singleton ruptured his ACL; he played the rest of the game but was put on IR the following week.
He returned to the field in 2025 and again played through a major health issue. During a routine drug test, doctors noticed elevated hormone levels, which led to a diagnosis of testicular cancer on Nov. 3.
Singleton played through the diagnosis and had surgery on Nov. 7, one day after playing in the Broncos’ Thursday Night Football game against the Las Vegas Raiders on Nov. 6.
Joseph called Singleton one of the league's best linebackers; Singleton returned the favor by praising his coach for supporting him.
“It's everything,” he said. “I would assume he's probably 99 percent of the reason I'm here. Maybe more than that. To have him say that, it means everything, ‘cause he means so much to my career. So to have his support is everything.”