Category Archives: NFL Top 100

NFL Top 100

My top 100 NFL players of 2022:

It’s that time of the year again! How the NFL’s official “Top 100 Players of 2022” list is being revealed has been as unclear as ever, in terms of initial release date and the frequency of episodes. Yet, we do finally know it’s coming out this Sunday and so as I do every year, I wanted to provide my own version of the list.

As always, the process of putting this together is very challenging and unlike the inherently flawed system of presenting players their own list of top-20 to fill out, which invites bias for teammates and gives us players towards the end of the countdown that shouldn’t be up in that top-20 stratosphere for any person. It’s also rarely clarified that this is a ranking of players for the upcoming (2022) season, rather than a look back at what happened last year.

Either way, having to actually put this whole thing together and explain it all does leave you dissatisfied, because there are so many guys you want to get on there, but you have to just make that cut-off. Once again, this is not a question of player value and we’re working under the assumption that each player would be in a neutral situation, rather than taking the pieces around him into account. There will always be a projection factor, but generally I tried to judge where players are currently, based on evidence we already have on them.

Two parameters to consider here – the players actually have to be by all likelihood available for the full 2022 NFL season, which excludes DeAndre Hopkins and by all accounts Deshaun Watson due to suspension, along with a few other names, who are expected to not be available for the start of the season based on injury, such as Chris Godwin. And everybody must have played at least ten games across the past two seasons, which disqualifies guys like Christian McCaffrey, Michael Thomas, Ronnie Stanley,and I also grouped David Bakhtiari with them, since he’s closer to that ten-game mark than full health it appears.

Let’s dive into the list:

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NFL Top 100

My NFL Top 100 players of 2021:  

As I have done the last seven years and as the actual reason I started with my page, I have put together my personal list of the NFL’s Top 100. This was originally designed to be a ranking of the top 100 players in the league, regardless of position, for the upcoming season. And while this has more and more become a comparison of resumes and altered its criteria, in the spirit of what this was intended to be, I listed what I thought were the very best players, in relation to how good they are at their position coming into 2021. What I changed this year was actually putting ratings on these players – sort of Madden style – and one by one incorporating them into the list, while debating back and forth when multiple guys shared the same number.

There are six names to start off with, who didn’t qualify for my list. I believe they all deserve to be on it, but I just didn’t know where to put them, because of how long it’s been since we’ve seen them on the field, how often they’ve gotten hurt recently or because we just don’t know if/when we will see them play again.

I also added the 30 names that just missed the cut. So it’s almost a top 130, because I always have a tough time leaving those names off, but I feel pretty good about the ultimate rankings that I put together here.

For analysis, just click on the video, where I work my way from the bottom to the top!

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The official countdown premieres five days from now, but I’m filming this here on August 4th – just in case any players were to suffer an injury or some other news coming out, that would change the availability of certain players.

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NFL Top 100

NFL Top 100 Players of 2020:

Every year NFL Network puts out a list of the Top 100 Players for the upcoming season, as voted by their peers. I have talked about the flaws of that whole process a few times already – the players only write down their top 20 players, which is understandable, but also doesn’t result in the proper results, since everybody is somewhat to put their guys on; not all players actually get to watch a lot of games, if they don’t include teams they actually face or are limited to watching highlights; and the voting concludes before the playoff are even here, which can be the only somewhat logical reason, Patrick Mahomes was only number four on the official list – even though that would still be wrong.

For the purpose of this list, I first put together my rankings of the top players at every single position, but then somewhat went off script by just writing down names in the order that they shot into my head, before comparing it with the positional rankings and trying to weigh guys against each other. And just to make this clear – these rankings are based on players regardless of their position, since otherwise would have almost half the starting quarterbacks in the league within the top 20 or so. And of course this is a bit of a projection and not solely built on what these players did this previous season, but also not about where they will be at the end of 2020.

Here is my list:

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NFL Top 100

NFL Top 100 Players of 2019:

So usually I wait for the NFL Network to finish their countdown and then I can look at some of the comparisons, but for some reason they won’t start releasing episodes until two-and-a-half weeks from now. Since training camps are in full swing at that point and I want to look at position battles or maybe even look forward to specific games and such as, I decided to reveal my list now already – which is where I usually do anyway.

Like I do every year, I want to clear up the criteria first. This is a list for the top players in 2019 – therefore players who will miss several games due to suspension (Patrick Peterson for example) or injury (Sheldon Rankins to a lesser degree) won’t be included and I also put together a couple of names that I am just not sure yet about what their status for the upcoming year is. Please understand that I am looking at these players as individual talents and will not reward them fully for what they have around them in terms of teammates or coaches.

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NFL Top 100

NFL Top 100 Players of 2018:

Like I do every year once the official player’s countdown is fully released, I wanted to make my own top 100 list. There is a serious misconception about the voting process. While opinions are heavily based on last year, this list is about the 2018 NFL season. It’s not about grading what they did last year alone, but rather what to expect from them this upcoming campaign. That’s why it is the top 100 players of 2018. I mean only 12 teams even played this year so far. Of course you should have recency bias to some degree, but you also have to look at the body of work and what you believe they are capable of. Without any further ado, here’s what I came up with:

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NFL Top 100

NFL Top 100 Players of 2017:

Once again NFL players voted for their peers to be named among the top 100 for this upcoming season. I want to reiterate that once more. The list might be based on what you saw from these athletes last year, but you project how well they will play in the 2017/18 season. I like the whole idea of it, but players seem to get confused with fellows who missed time or simply didn’t play at the level they’re capable of. Sure, you have to take availability into account, but as long as they’re cleared medically you aren’t supposed to project to them to be injured. At the same time you need to bump players who are suspended for a certain amount of games (like I did with Brady a year ago) or if there still are legitimate health concerns. I didn’t put offensive linemen as high as I would if the list was solely about the best players, since the question is how much value they present and that unit consists of five guys.

Now that we’ve cleared up the parameters, here’s my list. It might look pretty different to the official one, but I tried to really create it based on value.

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NFL Top 100

NFL Top 100 Players of 2016:

To make this clear right away – I love the NFL Top 100 list. I watch it every single year and they have some great audio clips, commentary and game scenes. But I also often disagree with the rankings, especially because I feel like the players vote for the top performers from the previous season instead of trying to project who the best players during the upcoming season will be. Because of that I listed the most under- and overrated players on the countdown and who I think got snubbed a couple of weeks ago.

Additionally I make my own list every year. To not have to argue about the criteria I didn’t include guys who didn’t play a single snap during the season like Jordy Nelson and Joe Haden, while also excluding someone like Justin Houston, who I’m not sure about if he’ll be cleared to hit the field in 2016. And since Tom Brady will ‘more likely than not’ be suspended for the first four games of the season he also dropped out of my top ten. Other players who struggled with staying on the field in previous years might have also not made the cut.

So here’s my version of the Top 100:

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NFL Top 100

Most under- and overrated players in the NFL Top 100 of 2016 and who got snubbed:

Every year over hundreds of players select their top 20 players in the league and the NFL Network compiles those lists to build the NFL Top 100. The first problem is that each player only lists his best 20, in which some of the guys at the bottom should never come up if everybody gave an objective opinion. The second one is that each player sees some on their fellow athletes twice during the season and some not at all and therefore they don’t get to see everybody on tape. So some mistakes are made and players get listed too high, too low or not at all. Here are my corrections:

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NFL Top 100

NFL Top 100 Players of 2015: Most underrated, overrated players and who got snubbed:

First of all, I love the Top 100 Players show. I love most of the clips, the comments – pretty much everything. But that doesn’t mean I agree with the rankings. Not at all. I already mentioned once that I don’t think the voting players get to see everybody in the league play. This is no form of critique, but rather me understanding what preparing for opponents and getting ready for game day feels like. You don’t have the time to watch teams you don’t even play against the entire year. So much like last year, I thought it was time to get a few things right. What you can read right here are lists of who I thought should have been ranked a lot higher and lower plus who I thought would have deserved a spot himself.

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NFL Top 100

NFL Top 100 players of 2015:

With the NFL Network already having presented numbers 100 to 81 and Terrell Suggs making an early appearance at the 84th spot, I decided to make my own list to stop the madness. If T-Sizzle is ranked this low I already fear what is lying ahead of us. The rankings come from their fellow players, which is somewhat understandable, but if you consider how much work they need to do during the season, I’m not sure how they can really evaluate all the players in the league. Sure, they know the game and have to study their opponents prior to the respective matchups, but I don’t know how much time they have to just watch different games and tell who the top 100 are.

To explain what this list is about – A number of players around the league get to list their top players in the NFL heading into this upcoming season and the result is the list, who is revealed in ten or eleven blocks of ten (depending on if they split the top ten this year again). So this is not about last year and it’s kind of about projecting as well, but since the voting process happened before some players were suspended for a couple of games, I didn’t take that fact into consideration either.

Full the already revealed players and the other 80 still coming up check in right here.

Here’s my list:

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