Just like with PFF’s player grades, the NFL Top 100 is only good when you agree with it. If it ranks some of the Philadelphia Eagles high, then it’s good. If it ranks them low, then it’s a meaningless piece of garbage, and no one knows anything about anything. Luckily, this year’s list is looking more and more like it’s a good list… so far.
So far, we’ve seen Josh Sweat, Jordan Mailata, Cooper DeJean, and Quinyon Mitchell all get (more or less) rightfully ranked between 100 and 49. That still leaves 18 other guys to get ranked inside the top 48… And if they aren't, we riot.
The imperfect perfection of the NFL’s Top 100 players
You can poo-poo the NFL’s top 100 list as much as you want, but it does have its merits. Last season, the top five players were Tyreek Hill, Lamar Jackson, Christian McCaffrey, Patrick Mahomes and Myles Garrett. More than half of those guys had bad 2025 seasons relative to what we’ve seen from them, but Jackson and Garrett played out of their minds in 2025. The problem is that it wasn’t a ranking for 2025.
The NFL does very little to help everyone understand what year it is. They release the next year’s Madden game in June of the previous year. Some teams think that the year they won the Super Bowl is the year of the season. And the ‘NFL Top 100 list for X year’ is actually voted on halfway through the season before that.
The thing is, the players vote on this whole thing between Thanksgiving and Christmas. So this isn’t really a ‘Top 100 players for the 2025 season’ list. Instead, it’s a ‘Top 100 players of a little more than mid-way through the 2024 season’ list.
On top of that, players just choose their top 20 guys. A first-place vote is worth 20 points, and a 20th-place vote is worth one point. They throw all those numbers into some kind of spreadsheet/algorithm, and voila: there’s your top 100.
Regardless, the Eagles won the Super Bowl, so you knew that this list was going to be chock-full of guys from that team. So, for reference, at the time everyone was voting on all of this stuff, the Eagles were on their Week 12 to Week 16 stretch. Those games were at the Rams, at the Ravens, vs. the Panthers, vs. the Steelers and at the Commanders.
That means players were voting on who was the best when Saquon Barkley was rushing for 255 yards, Cooper DeJean committed regicide against Derrick Henry, the offense had a 10-minute drive to end the Steelers game, C.J. Gardner-Johnson put Xavier Legette into the shadow realm, and Nolan Smith recovered two fumbles against the Commanders.
It’s important to know what the league was seeing from the best team in football when they were voting on which players were the best. It’s a perfect poll from a sicko point of view: It’s imperfect for everyone, which means it’s also even ground for everyone.
No. 95: Josh Sweat
In my book, Josh Sweat is still an Eagle until he takes a real snap in a real game with the Arizona Cardinals. With that being said, this is a great spot for him. He wasn’t one of the premiere or elite edge rushers in the NFL, but he was awesome when he needed to be.
He’d never landed on the top 100 before and knowing how the season ended with him sacking Patrick Mahomes 2.5 times in the Super Bowl, this placement totally rocks.
No. 69: Jordan Mailata
It’s good that Jordan Mailata made it into the top 100, but 68 seems pretty low for him. The three players ahead of him were Jordan Love, Malik Nabers, and Jalen Ramsey. Those three guys alone aren’t better than Mailata.
It probably has something to do with him missing Weeks 7 through 11 with a hamstring injury, but we’re talking about an All-Pro left tackle who (Per NFL Pro) only allowed 1.5 sacks and 14 pressures. It seems like he probably should’ve been in the top-60, but whatever.
No. 60: Cooper DeJean
Going into this, it felt like Cooper DeJean might’ve ended up going in the 70s, and when he didn’t it felt like he would get snubbed… and then he landed at 60 and to that, you just have to say, ‘Hell yeah.’
Not only did he do the Derrick Henry thing during the time when players were voting on this, but it was only about a month after he came in as a full-time starter and changed the defense. Just like with Sweat, it’s awesome that his ranking looks even more justified by getting the pick-six in the Super Bowl.
With him getting ranked where he got ranked, you know that the top-50 is going to be loaded with our guys.
No. 49: Quinyon Mitchell
There’s something great about a player who almost never gets his name brought up by the national media, but still gets his flowers. That’s the case with Quinyon Mitchell, and that’s exactly what you want out of a rookie cornerback.
For Quinyonamo Bay, there are only two reasons he would get talked about: If he’s being a ball hawk (which he unfortunately wasn’t) or if he’s constantly getting targeted and losing (which he also wasn’t). He was an unbelievable lockdown corner who quietly took away an entire side of the field.
The best thing (or most painful thing) about all this is that the Jared Verse who stole the Defensive Rookie of the Year award from Mitchell, was ranked 53 and Terry McClaurin was ranked 52.
Predictions for the rest of the list
In a perfect world, Lane Johnson would be ranked at the No. 1 spot because he’s the best football player in the world right now. That’s not going to be the case though. I imagine that he’ll end up being somewhere in the top 12, and Saquon Barkley is going to be No. 1.
Jalen Hurts will most likely be in the top 15. After the 2022 season he was ranked No. 3, and I can’t imagine he’ll end up getting in the top five this season… unless people voted after the Week 15 Steelers game where he pieced apart that defense.
A.J. Brown should be a top-10 finisher while DeVonta Smith will either be in the top 30, or he’ll get snubbed. Last year he was ranked at 90, and statistically, he had a worse season than he had last season. Hopefully everyone who voted was smart enough to pay more attention to his actual play and his clutchness, but who knows? He makes all his super sick and super high-difficulty catches look like child’s play; he’s a victim of his own success. Dallas Goedert probably won’t make it onto the list because he missed eight games.
Landon Dickerson will be somewhere in the top 25. Mekhi Becton could be snubbed, but if he’s not, he’ll be in the 40s with Cam Jurgens.
On the defense, the snubs are going to be Darius Slay, Reed Blankenship, maybe Nolan Smith and maybe Milton Williams. Zack Baun and Jalen Carter should make it in the top-15. Nakobe Dean was healthy during the voting so he and C.J. Gardner-Johnson might be in the low 40s to mid 30s.
Problems with the list
The biggest and most glaring problem with this whole thing is Dak Prescott who took the 79th spot… What? He played in nine games and lost five of them before he got hurt. Did everyone on that Cowboys team throw him in their top five just to boost his numbers? Is that a conspiracy theory?
For all of the reasons why this list rocks (because it likes the people I like), the Dak Prescott thing makes me kind of think that this actually doesn’t matter at all… but that can’t be true, right?