Dwight Freeney is NFC Defensive Player of the Week, 2nd straight for Arizona Cardinals player

For the second straight week, an Arizona Cardinals player is the NFC Defensive Player of the Week. A week after safety Deone Bucannon earned that honor following a game in which he had his first career interception and touchdown, linebacker Dwight Freeney now gets the honor.

This is the Freeney's sixth career "Defensive Player of the Week" selection and his first with the Cardinals. Freeney previously was named "AFC Defensive Player of the Week" five times (2010, 2007, 2006, 2003 and 2002) with the Colts.

Freeney tied his career high with three sacks and also forced a fumble in the Cardinals win last Sunday. It marked the sixth time in his career and first time since 2006 that Freeney had three sacks in a game. Arizona's defense had nine sacks against the Packers, the third-best single game total in franchise history and the highest sack total for the team since 1986 at Philadelphia. The Cardinals became the first team with at least nine sacks and two fumble recoveries returned for touchdowns in a game since at least 1963, the first year that team sacks were recorded.

For the season, Freeney leads the Cardinals with seven sacks and has now has 118.5 sacks for his career, good for 19th place on the NFL's all-time sacks list. His 47 career forced fumbles are tied with Robert Mathis for the most among active players.

Freeney is the sixth different Cardinals player this season to win "Player of the Week" and the third player in the past three weeks. Other winners this season include safety Deone Bucannon (Defensive, Week 15), kicker Chandler Catanzaro (Special Teams, Week 14), safety Tyrann Mathieu (Defensive, Week 3), wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald (Offensive, Week 2) and kick returner David Johnson (Special Teams, Week 2).

It is the second consecutive season and third time (1998, Weeks 15-17) in team history that the Cardinals have had "Player of the Week" winners in three straight weeks. Last year Larry Fitzgerald (Week 8), Justin Bethel (Week 9) and Patrick Peterson (Week 10) were honored. This is also only the second time since the award started in 1984 that Cardinals defenders have won player of the week honors in consecutive weeks (2007-Karlos Dansby, Antel Rolle).