The New York Jets hope to build on one of their best defensive performances of the season when they face the Arizona Cardinals on Sunday at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz., with kickoff set for 4:25 p.m. on CBS.

New York (3-6) sacked Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud eight times last Thursday in their 21-13 victory. The Jets hadn’t posted a total like that all season. New York did allow 106 rushing yards to Joe Mixon and another 59 rushing yards to Stroud. So, the run defense still isn’t quite where New York wants it to be.

But the pass rush went to another level last week, and the Jets hope to keep that moving on Sunday.

The Cardinals (5-4) are coming off one of their best defensive performances of the year so far after holding Chicago quarterback Caleb Williams without a touchdown pass and limiting running back D’Andre Swift to just 51 yards.

That’s not a big surprise considering Cardinals coach Jonathan Gannon, in his second season, was formerly a defensive coordinator.

Here are the defensive players to watch for both teams entering the game.

DE Micheal Clemons

New York needed the kind of game it got out of Clemons last Thursday. He sacked Stroud twice (linebacker Jamien Sherwood did as well). Those were Clemons’ first sacks since Oct. 6 in London and gave him 4.5 sacks for the season. The Jets need him to get to the quarterback more consistently the second half of the season.

DT Quinnen Williams

After a slow start to the season, Williams is starting to pick up steam. He had 1.5 sacks and forced a fumble against Houston last week. But take a deeper dive and you’ll see that he’s sacked the quarterback four times in the last three games. That’s four of his five sacks to this point in the season.

LB Jamien Sherwood

As noted earlier, Sherwood sacked the quarterback twice last Thursday. Those were his first two sacks of the season. But the Jets pay him to tackle and he’s been doing that a lot this season. His 80 tackles lead his closest teammate by 16 (Quincy Williams has 64) and he’s also defended a pass. Every week, Sherwood steps up and produces.

S Budda Baker

Speaking of tackling machines, Baker is having an incredible season for the Cardinals. He has a team-leading 90 tackles (including 58 solo shots), with four tackles for loss and two passes defended. Arizona would love to see him get an interception, but then again, he’s doing just about everything else.

DT Dante Stills

The Cardinals don’t have a high-octane pass rush and made a deal earlier this week to get some depth for the edge. But Stills has been their most consistent producer up front, as he leads the team with 3.5 sacks. He also has 26 tackles, three tackles for loss and has forced a fumble in eight games.

LB Zaven Collins

Collins gives the Cardinals a little bit of everything from the second level of their defense. He has 37 tackles, with 22 solo stops. He has three sacks, which is just behind Stills for the team lead. He also has five tackles for loss. He’ll be among one of the most productive defensive players on the field on Sunday.

PHOENIX — U.S. Rep. Ruben Gallego’s lead over Kari Lake in the race for Arizona’s open U.S. Senate seat continued to decrease as of Thursday night.

Drops from multiple counties, including about 70,000 votes from Maricopa County, cut Gallego’s advantage to 49.8%-48.1% — a difference of 1.7 percentage points (43,698 votes), with about 2.6 million votes tallied as of Thursday evening, according to the Arizona Secretary of State’s Office results page.

As of Thursday morning, Gallego’s advantage was 52,578 votes as tallies from Republican-heavy rural counties were unveiled.

Green Party candidate Eduardo Quintana was pulling about 2%.

Gallego’s lead fluctuated for most of Wednesday as those rural counties that reported results earlier in the day favored Lake. Maricopa County, the state’s largest county by far, released the results of about 175,000 votes slightly favoring the Democrat in two evening drops.

Gallego was leading Lake by 5.4 points in the initial results posted after the polls closed Tuesday night.

The winner will replace Kyrsten Sinema, an independent who did not seek reelection.

Regardless of who wins the Arizona race, Republicans will win control of the Senate, giving a boost to Donald Trump’s agenda as he returns to the White House.

Who are Ruben Gallego and Kari Lake?

Gallego is the representative for Arizona’s 3rd Congressional District, which covers most of south, west and downtown Phoenix. The Marine veteran has served five terms in the U.S. House.

Gallego entered the race in January 2023 and ran unopposed in the July primary election.

Lake, the Republican candidate, is one of Arizona’s most well known political figures and popular in GOP circles.

Lake, recognizable in the Phoenix market from her years on TV before getting into politics, built an enthusiastic following among Republicans with her unflinching support for Donald Trump and her steadfast promotion of false claims of election fraud.

She lost the 2022 Arizona gubernatorial election to Democrat Katie Hobbs in her first run for office. Lake has since unsuccessfully fought the results of the 2022 election in court.

Lake entered the race in October 2023 and defeated Pinal County Sheriff Mark Lamb in the primary.

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With a win in Wisconsin early Wednesday, Donald Trump cleared the 270 electoral votes needed to clinch the presidency. But his exact margin of victory is still unclear — there are two presidential races that haven’t been called.

Those two races are Arizona and Nevada.

Officials in Arizona’s Maricopa County said late Wednesday they’ve got more than 700,000 ballots left to count, which means the races for president and senate were too early to call.

The Associated Press estimates there are at least a million ballots to be added to the results in Arizona. County election officials were expected to firm up those numbers on Thursday.

In Nevada, the AP estimated late Wednesday evening that there were more than 200,000 ballots left to count — including more than 130,000 in Clark County. Given the narrow margins in the races for president and U.S. Senate, both remain “too early to call,” according to NBC News.

See the latest results here:

Beyond the electoral votes, Trump also appeared poised to win the popular vote.

As of Thursday morning, results showed Trump had 72.8 million votes to Harris’ 68.1 million.

While Republicans took control of the White House and the Senate, the fate of the House also remained too close to call.

The House contests remained a tit-for-tat fight to the finish, with no dominant pathway to the majority for either party. Rarely, if ever have the two chambers of Congress flipped in opposite directions.

A few individual seats, or even a single one, will determine the outcome. Final tallies will take a while, likely pushing the decision into next week — or beyond.