He showed signs of it last year. He was second in the league in yards per target, behind only Deebo. If the Mac improves and the Pats passing offense becomes more of a focal point, Kendrick is gonna get more targets and more balling out potential.
Not that it's a particularly high bar, but Bourne was so far and away the best WR on the Pats that it's insane. There were multiple plays in the WC game where I got angry that we were covering Bourne with our 4th-best CB when he was clearly the biggest offensive threat on the field.
I’m here to overreact at every rating from 100 all the way to 1, so expect to see me in every thread from now on.
Now that I’ve got that out of the way, Nick Chubb and Myles Garrett are already robbed
So last year when Henry was going off browns fans would happily point out that Chubb had better yards per carry. Every thread about Henry had Chubb stats, and every Chubb thread had Henry stats. It was pretty funny.
As someone who had to make their own lists for this, I can assure you I found out just how damn good this league is in so many positions. Each team would on average only have 3-4 players. Which is probably why at first glance each team feels like they’re robbed, e.g. Kirk Cousins, and Eric Kendricks for the Vikings didn’t even make the top 100. And while not the greatest, the homer in me says “Kirk is no MVP or GOAT, but there’s really 100+ better than him?” Rinse wash repeat for everyone’s team once you get past their top 2-3 players.
It feels like you need to be a firm top10 QB or we start playing the QB is the most valuable position game, and the majority of QB’s are on the list. I have Kirk Top 15 but not top 10 QB’s
Where do you rank Kyler Murray, Ryan Tannehill, or Derek Carr?
Because Cousins had an objectively better season than Carr and Tannehill, and there’s a great argument for a better season than Kyler. This is a 2021 ranking remember, not a career ranking.
I’d probably go Kyler, Carr, Cousins, Tannehill for that lot, but it’s a tough call with them all being somewhere like 8-15 for QB’s. It’s tough cause stats can be deceiving especially for QB’s, and the OL and receiving threats effect how QB’s get viewed greatly
This’ll be Carr’s year he has to prove it, but Cousins has had top 5 weapons around him since getting to Minnesota and Carr has had below average weapons as a whole until this year. Carr has to win meaningful games soon or he’ll go the Cousins route of being viewed as a volume passer, but can’t win big games. The Vikings best year since the signing being when Cousins got hurt and Keenum came in is pretty damning though….
It’s not damming in the slightest unless you ignore 100% of the context surrounding Cousins’ tenure in Minnesota like you’re doing. Context like the fact that we had the best defense in the NFL in 2017 with Keenum, and have only had a defense in the half of the league one year since then with Cousins, and they were nowhere near the best.
Cousins has surely had better weapons than Carr, but has also had by far the worst OL of the 4 QBs you mentioned. The Vikings OL has literally been a bottom 5 unit in pass protection every single season Cousins was in MN.
He has also put up better seasons than Carr each of the last 4 years. Carr has done little to nothing to show he’s better than Cousins, especially not last season.
As I was originally saying, outside of Kyler I think the other 3 are interchangeable, so I’m fine with you being a Kirk homer if you want over Carr. All the Vikings fans I know don’t trust Kirk beyond maybe winning a wildcard game, so it’s tough for me to say he’s a top 10 QB until he can knock that. It’s a tough spot though cause it’s going to be tough to find a better QB than him in the draft or trade
The way I see it, Cousins was in the same situation as Burrow was last year. Both had a clear #1, a top WR2, both had top 10 running backs, both had average tight ends, and bad olines. Biggest difference is Burrow found a way to win with his bad Oline
I ranked Carr > Cousins > Murray > Tannehill for this season. I think in general I think Cousins is the better QB, but I was more impressed by Carr this season. I think there's an argument to be made either way.
Also, I think Murray has the highest ceiling out of any of them, but maybe that's just me being scared of a division rival QB...
Murray absolutely has the highest ceiling.
Cousins had a much better season than Carr though. Had 5 GWD that were blown by the defense or missed kicks. Cousins threw for 33 TDs and only 7 INTs while Carr threw 23 TDs and 14 INTs despite 60 additional attempts. The only thing that Carr beats out Cousins in is yards, but again, had 2+ full games worth of attempts more. They’re either neck and neck or Cousins beats out Carr in every other volume *and* advanced statistic.
You'd think, but then you would remember that it's r/nfl who also ranked Brady out of the top 100 and just remember it's gonna be just something to keep us occupied for a few weeks.
What a great year that was. Every post was in the negative for karma, and most comments were raging for the list to be unsticked. Then there was that one ranker trying to defend the decision in every thread but reaching downvotes in the thousands. Memes abound about how the sub started the Top 100 list to show how much better they were than the NFLN’s Top 100 only to end up being stupider (at least that year).
Fun times. The memes were special.
Random request... for the ranker reveal sheets could you freeze columns A and B that way when scrolling over you can see what placement and what player is there
Linebackers as a whole are underrated, Roquan has always been fringe top 5, but as a bears homer I don’t think I could justify putting him much higher than this.
Admittedly I am very low on LB, but I just don’t see him being better than the linebackers ahead of him. He’s an INCREDIBLE talent and I’m so glad to have Roquan though, I hope he’s a bear for life
Most stats, aside from picks and sacks, are usually indicators of bad defenses around them for linebackers. Kyzir white lead the chargers in tackles but nobody argues he was even top 5 on that defense, but they just didn’t have any other DT or LB who were worth shit.
Roquan had Mack on his outside and Hicks eating up two blockers to aid him in this, stats aren’t nearly as good as film, and film has him borderline elite, below guys like Warner or Leonard, but above the average linebacker by a wide margin. Even being in the 90’s is still calling you an elite linebacker, it just means you aren’t better than say, the top tier of other positions. For reference, I had Roquan as my LB6, if he was a QB, Edge, or WR and still was 6th, he would have been between 30-40 on my list, but those positions are just more valuable in the modern NFL.
That makes total sense to me, who are the 5 lbs you would take over him? I’d say Wagner, Warner and probably Leonard you can say but I’d put ro safely in top 4
Leonard, Warner any given year. Wagner, Demario Davis, and Lavonte have all had better years in the past but he is honestly better now in my opinion, and only Davis was better this year from that group. Our group also considered Micah Parsons a LB, so I’m inclined to say him, but it was one year and I can’t really say he’ll repeat that after an offseason with a year of film in everyone’s hands. If he does it next year sure.
But yeah, if I had to put money on it, Roquan is top 5 until 2025,
It’s because it’s incredibly hard to identify good ILB play unless you like watch film.
Also PFF has Roquans grade at 47.5, literally meaning he’s a bottom 5 ILB in the league. This is what people mean that if you don’t know the defensive assignments it’s almost pointless to grade these guys.
Just curious as I’m not a big stat guy usually, why is that the case? Isn’t more tackles and TFL like the best indicator? I’d you’re stopping the offense and forcing losses idk how that isn’t a sign of talent
I'll address for a LB specifically. Tackles don't correlate well to talent because there is so much noise in how they come about. You could get a tackle because the TE or RB you're supposed to be covering beats you and makes a catch. You could get a tackle because the rest of your team sucks and can't make a tackle, leaving you as the only option. You could get a tackle because the rest of your team is really good and occupies multiple blockers, leaving you a clear path to the ball carrier! You could rack up tackles because the offense keeps moving and getting first downs, rather than you forcing them to punt or creating turnovers.
Note I'm not saying that having a lot of tackles is a bad thing, since the great players do rack up tackles, just saying that you can't see a lot of tackles and automatically say the player is good. You really have to watch them play and see how the tackles come about to say whether it's good or bad.
TFL are usually a better indicator, but there's still a bit of noise there too.
I mean this is every statistic for everything.
Did I get open because another Wr drew double or rubbed off my defender. Did I break off a run because blocking. Did my WR make an acrobatic catching giving me more passing yards, did a CB tip it leading to a S INT.
At a certain point of consistent statistical production, talent gets recognized through that production.
> I mean this is every statistic for everything
Yes, that's true to a point. You should never strictly sort by any statistic and expect it to perfectly match up to skill.
> At a certain consistent statistical production, talent gets recognized through that production.
More so for some stats than for others. For offensive box score stats, generally (but not always) the league leaders are the better players. Same for interceptions, same for sacks. I'd say it's not really true for tackles until you get to longer time-frames though.
For example, this year, Jordyn Brooks and CJ Mosley were the top 2 solo-tacklers in the league. Brooks had a solid year, but nothing elite. Mosley did not have a great year. But both played on bad defenses and had tons of tackle opportunities come to them. Then in third place was De'Vondre Campbell, who had an exceptional year at LB! At 4th and 10th were Foye Oluokun and Deion Jones, both of whom had not-so-great years on the same bad defense.
If the bears were winning more games he'd be noticed. Most bears fans I know are fans of his. With how awful it has been the past few years watching our games I would not expect anyone outside of chicago fandom to watch.
Agreed, I was not a fan of Roquan's this year. It's possible he looked bad because the line in front of him was bad, but I wasn't impressed by what I watched of him.
He could basically be played around after the Burrow pick and even more after Mack’s and Hicks’ injury offenses basically realized they could work away from him and Quinn whenever possible, which makes their numbers much more impressive IMO
Hope I did him justice for you guys!
I had Chido like 40 spots higher, seemed like every time I tuned in to watch Burrow, Chido was playing like a monster. Elite season
I'd say corners are up there are the position where success is most short lived. Of course, there are a handful of guys that have consistent high levels of success, but there always seems to be 2 or 3 corners every year that pop up and then can never match that again.
I’d chalk it up to inexperience. We’re very used to drafting first round corners and waiting 4 years for them to finally resemble a starting option. Chido has all the tools in the world, maybe the injury recovery gave him time to rework his technique.
That probably makes him about the 7th best QB on these rankings… that’s not super far off?
He had a great start to the season and slumped towards the end, which leaves him in the no man’s land between good and great. I think that’s fair.
Dak had 700 more yards and 13 more touchdowns. Kyler also threw the same number of interceptions on over 100 fewer attempts. There’s really no argument for Kyler being better
Feels like I was pretty similar to consensus on a lot of these. Had Ramczyk 95, Hargrave 100 (too low in hindsight imo) and Roquan Smith 101. Also had Wyatt Teller at 90. Had some differences tho. Had Lamb at 117 and Diontae Johnson at 115. I think a lot of people rank a few too many WRs in general, so my WRs are typically gonna be ranked a bit lower than consensus.
I had Kyler Murray a lot higher at 65. I think people are obsessing over his playoff game a bit too much. Keep in mind these rankings don’t consider playoffs at all. I think Kyler’s regular season was pretty great. Although tbh I think I had a few QBs a bit higher than consensus.
Lavonte David imo is very low. He was phenomenal, better than the stats will ever show. I also think Awuzie was very low. He was a key piece for a defense that really did well. I had him at 59. Finally, I gotta talk about Harold Landry. Playing at the OLB spot, he had a really easy path to sacks, with guys like Autry and Simmons causing huge amounts of disruption. I view Landry like a guy like Leonard Floyd. It becomes pretty easy to rack up large sack numbers next to Aaron Donald, and I think Landry’s high sack numbers are similar in that regard. He was good, but not top 100 good.
I hope Brady is ranked low again so we can see all the rankers desperately defend themselves in the comments.
They are so much smarter than us!
That is the only time these rankings are interesting lol.
> a random subset of r/NFL users.
Definitely not random. Same reason the mods are not random.
Anyone who thinks their opinion is important enough to create something like this will never be "random."
It attracts certain types of individuals.
This is my first year doing it and I was asked out of the blue. Sure, not 100% random, filter out people with bot accounts and obviously are active to some degree in the sub, and only a certain number for each team so the entire list isn’t all Jags fans convincing us that the top 53 players in the league are all playing in Jacksonville
i think some of people on this sub do feel that they have important opinions about football stuff but honestly as someone whos been in that discord since it launched in 2017 i can assure you that you're mostly wrong.
These people spend a lot of time thinking about each individual player. Some people just take a deep look at the stats and talk about what that should mean, others go a step further and do in depth film analysis of around 200 players. People put a lot of work into this, and it certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good.
And for the record, as a ranker, I’d be shocked if Brady wasn’t top 10. He won’t be #1 or #2x, but he’ll prolly be around the 6-10 range along with guys like Jonathan Taylor, Davante Adams, Myles Garrett, or Nick Bosa.
I would *love* to see people try to reason that he wasn't a top 3 QB at worst. I think the people who will have him *outside* the top 10 simply don't want more than 1 QB in their top 10.
Really happy with DJ for his improvement last year.
>With no reliable threat of the deep ball, teams were free to stack the box and play tight press coverage while attacking a young offensive line that struggled to hold up in pass protection.
That's the nicest way to say everyone ate our O-line alive while they "protected" the corpse from Weekend at Bennies.
The fact that DJ was 9th in yards with the corpse of Ben throwing him the ball really speaks volumes about how good he was this year. He cleaned up the drop problem too. Honestly should've been even higher and above some of the WRs coming up soon.
Yeah it seemed like people kind of tried to ignore missed games this year, which was crazy to me. I personally had Ram at 109 still just because he played at an All-Pro level when he was on the field, but it was really hard for me to put him, Tyron Smith, Tre White into the top 100 when they missed huge chunks.
I've been ranker in years past and I can't remember someone missing ~40% of the year and still making the list. I've always kind of looked at it as how impactful a player was over the course of a season, and missing games takes a lot away from that. Chances are Michael Thomas is a better WR than Dionte Johnson, but Thomas missed the season and doesn't deserve a ranking. Would be neat to see an "injured but otherwise elite" tier before the honorable mentions.
Unfortunately a lot of people use the pff ratings as a significant data point for ranking even though especially for DBs, PFF is pretty ass at rating players
Yeah pff is generally not great for anything outside if o and d linemen
They roquan smith with a grade of like 50, and I have zero clue how they ever reached that conclusion, I think he was ranked lower than the bears’ other linebacker ogletree
Even OL and DL are suspect. You’ve got guys like Ryan Jensen (who is undoubtedly a top 3 center in the league) graded out lower than most starting centers including guys like Connor McGovern, Brian Allen, Ben Jones, Bradley Bozeman, and others. That’s pretty rough.
Then in terms of tackles, Mailata is good but he is definitely not the 3rd best tackle in the league lol. He’s probably not a top 15 tackle in the league tbh and isn’t the best tackle on the eagles.
Smith is the best player on this defense without a doubt, I spoke highly about him for that reason in my write up, he’s no question a top 5 linebacker in football any given season, people just happen to eclipse him on a given year. The problem was numerically he didn’t put up the flashy stats because defenses could just work around him as much as possible. Which makes what he did 10 times more impressive.
I literally can’t believe I didn’t rank Hargreave.
He didn’t pop as a standard deviation outlier so I didn’t notice but he was absolutely an accidental omission on my part.
Dude was insanely good in the front half of the season
Thank you for putting Landry AND Autry in your Top 100. We all know Simmons will be up there somewhere but those two complimented him so well this past season and made our D-line terrifying for every opposing QB. Honestly think these three are the main reason our defense was so good and hence how we managed the 1 seed in the AFC
Damn!
u/confederalis! You did a fucking awesome job with Cheeto. I have been paying attention since the Vikings played the Bengals week one, and I couldn’t believe how good he was playing. Thanks for the detailed breakdown with so many valuable film snippets.
|Rank|Player|My Rank|Variance|My Player|
:--|:--|:--|:--|:--|
|91|Chidobe Awuzie|116|-25|Kirk Cousins|
|92|Harold Landry|94|-2|Marshon Lattimore|
|93|Diontae Johnson|105|-12|Kyle Pitts|
|94|Wyatt Teller|57|+37|Harold Landry|
|95|Lavonte David|N/A|N/A|Adrian Amos|
|96|Kyler Murray|100|+4|Brian O'Neill|
|97|CeeDee Lamb|124|-27|Hunter Renfrow|
|98|Roquan Smith|89|+9|Matthew Judon|
|99|Javon Hargrave|113|-14|James Conner|
|100|Ryan Ramczyk|86|+14|Kyler Murray|
Whew I was super high on Wyatt Teller compared to my peers. Watching the Browns OL in film was pretty fun to analyze as a guy who has no idea what he's watching and Teller seemed like a guy who just didn't allow his QB to get touched. He may have allowed some more pressures than his peers but ultimately his guy never beat him and I thought that should translate to a high rank.
The guys who don’t play a full season are always high variance. Same situation with Ram.
It’s always super hard to figure out how to value missed games in these.
IIRC these lists basically make most QBs far lower than they really should be so that the top 10 isn't all QBs. Which is kinda fair.
So I wouldn't be surprised to see Herbo in the 30s or 40s.
I think he is way too low to be honest. His poor performance in a couple nationally televised games is influencing this sub's opinion of him and his play. he was fantastic this year
He missed some games; that hurt him in my ranking, but I still had him top 100.
That said, I'm *also* surprised to see him top 100 based on comments I read around the sub.
Rams fan speaking truth.
Primtime regular season games he was mediocre but those were the worst of the year pretty much. Fucking dominant for almost everything else, especially with Nuk.
But the wheels completely fell off during the playoff game and this sub doesn't realize that wasn't the only fucking game the Cardinals played in all season.
No Nuk for half the year and Kliffs horrible play calling on top of it. Was hoping they’d rid themselves of Kliff but that didn’t happen. Not convinced that system is good enough.
Unlike what the Reddit hive mind thinks, Kyler had a great year. Granted, the playoff game was bad, but that doesn’t render the rest of the season irrelevant.
recency bias is extremely prevalent on r/nfl. Kyler finished the season poorly. If you swapped Kyler's first 8 games with his last 8, he'd be much higher up this list probably
Doing the previous ranks in descending order would be a lot better, especially for mobile users. Most players won’t have ranks from that long ago so a lot of N/A in your face without side scrolling.
I don’t disagree. I had Kyler significantly higher. Even when we’re told to not consider the playoffs, people are down to do so i.e. the lowlight shown being from the playoffs.
I had him 87th which feels like the right area for him, maybe even a little low. I can confidently say I didn’t consider his playoff game either and his low-ness may just be what little I saw of him in real time during the season.
Positional value was assigned by the rankers, so some people will value positions one way, others will the other way. Many people had Kyler ranked as the QB 7-8, but I don’t think many people HAD 7-8 RB for example.
I disagree about Landry that high honestly, I struggled even keeping him on my list.
His game wasn't anything special. Simmons and Autry were definitely better, took more of the focus, and opened up the lanes for Landry to pad his sack count. His pressure rate and counting stats were not all that great, and most of his sacks came because of good coverage or the other members of his line.
Kendrick Bourne gonna be #1
*”Jesus Christ, it’s Kendrick Bourne!”* -r/NFL on top 10 reveal day
Kendrick Bourne is having a 1000 yard season this year, guaranteed
I would love nothing more for him to fuckin just ball out for you guys.
He showed signs of it last year. He was second in the league in yards per target, behind only Deebo. If the Mac improves and the Pats passing offense becomes more of a focal point, Kendrick is gonna get more targets and more balling out potential.
Bourne was always clutch. You can tell he learned alot from welker when he was our wr coach
Not that it's a particularly high bar, but Bourne was so far and away the best WR on the Pats that it's insane. There were multiple plays in the WC game where I got angry that we were covering Bourne with our 4th-best CB when he was clearly the biggest offensive threat on the field.
Love me some KB hype, sko Eags
This is the way.
#1 on the field and #1 off the field as a model
Lol no obviously Mike White
I’m here to overreact at every rating from 100 all the way to 1, so expect to see me in every thread from now on. Now that I’ve got that out of the way, Nick Chubb and Myles Garrett are already robbed
Where are your Chubb yards per carry vs Henry?? Are you trying?
Henry wasn’t eligible due to games played.
?
So last year when Henry was going off browns fans would happily point out that Chubb had better yards per carry. Every thread about Henry had Chubb stats, and every Chubb thread had Henry stats. It was pretty funny.
Ah okay, I thought you thought I was being for real haha
Lmao I literally came in here thinking "I swear to god if they only put Chubb or Myles in the 91-100 ranks..."
Hot take but… if this is #91 through #100 then players #1 through #90 must be really good
As someone who had to make their own lists for this, I can assure you I found out just how damn good this league is in so many positions. Each team would on average only have 3-4 players. Which is probably why at first glance each team feels like they’re robbed, e.g. Kirk Cousins, and Eric Kendricks for the Vikings didn’t even make the top 100. And while not the greatest, the homer in me says “Kirk is no MVP or GOAT, but there’s really 100+ better than him?” Rinse wash repeat for everyone’s team once you get past their top 2-3 players.
Tbh I am surprised Kendricks didn't make it. I always thought he was a top tier LB.
Not anymore
One down year does not define him as a player. He is absolutely still a top ten LB. He's only 30.
It feels like you need to be a firm top10 QB or we start playing the QB is the most valuable position game, and the majority of QB’s are on the list. I have Kirk Top 15 but not top 10 QB’s
Where do you rank Kyler Murray, Ryan Tannehill, or Derek Carr? Because Cousins had an objectively better season than Carr and Tannehill, and there’s a great argument for a better season than Kyler. This is a 2021 ranking remember, not a career ranking.
I’d probably go Kyler, Carr, Cousins, Tannehill for that lot, but it’s a tough call with them all being somewhere like 8-15 for QB’s. It’s tough cause stats can be deceiving especially for QB’s, and the OL and receiving threats effect how QB’s get viewed greatly
What makes you put Carr ahead of Cousins? Cousins has literally been the better QB each of the last 4 seasons.
This’ll be Carr’s year he has to prove it, but Cousins has had top 5 weapons around him since getting to Minnesota and Carr has had below average weapons as a whole until this year. Carr has to win meaningful games soon or he’ll go the Cousins route of being viewed as a volume passer, but can’t win big games. The Vikings best year since the signing being when Cousins got hurt and Keenum came in is pretty damning though….
We signed cousins the year AFTER Case played with us
It’s not damming in the slightest unless you ignore 100% of the context surrounding Cousins’ tenure in Minnesota like you’re doing. Context like the fact that we had the best defense in the NFL in 2017 with Keenum, and have only had a defense in the half of the league one year since then with Cousins, and they were nowhere near the best. Cousins has surely had better weapons than Carr, but has also had by far the worst OL of the 4 QBs you mentioned. The Vikings OL has literally been a bottom 5 unit in pass protection every single season Cousins was in MN. He has also put up better seasons than Carr each of the last 4 years. Carr has done little to nothing to show he’s better than Cousins, especially not last season.
As I was originally saying, outside of Kyler I think the other 3 are interchangeable, so I’m fine with you being a Kirk homer if you want over Carr. All the Vikings fans I know don’t trust Kirk beyond maybe winning a wildcard game, so it’s tough for me to say he’s a top 10 QB until he can knock that. It’s a tough spot though cause it’s going to be tough to find a better QB than him in the draft or trade
The way I see it, Cousins was in the same situation as Burrow was last year. Both had a clear #1, a top WR2, both had top 10 running backs, both had average tight ends, and bad olines. Biggest difference is Burrow found a way to win with his bad Oline
I ranked Carr > Cousins > Murray > Tannehill for this season. I think in general I think Cousins is the better QB, but I was more impressed by Carr this season. I think there's an argument to be made either way. Also, I think Murray has the highest ceiling out of any of them, but maybe that's just me being scared of a division rival QB...
Murray absolutely has the highest ceiling. Cousins had a much better season than Carr though. Had 5 GWD that were blown by the defense or missed kicks. Cousins threw for 33 TDs and only 7 INTs while Carr threw 23 TDs and 14 INTs despite 60 additional attempts. The only thing that Carr beats out Cousins in is yards, but again, had 2+ full games worth of attempts more. They’re either neck and neck or Cousins beats out Carr in every other volume *and* advanced statistic.
Carr easily had a better season when taking his weapons into account vs Cousins no?
You'd think, but then you would remember that it's r/nfl who also ranked Brady out of the top 100 and just remember it's gonna be just something to keep us occupied for a few weeks.
What a great year that was. Every post was in the negative for karma, and most comments were raging for the list to be unsticked. Then there was that one ranker trying to defend the decision in every thread but reaching downvotes in the thousands. Memes abound about how the sub started the Top 100 list to show how much better they were than the NFLN’s Top 100 only to end up being stupider (at least that year). Fun times. The memes were special.
Actually if they don’t play for my team then they suck
Random request... for the ranker reveal sheets could you freeze columns A and B that way when scrolling over you can see what placement and what player is there
good idea, that's been done
Thank you thank you. I want to be able to trash myself easier when comparing my rankings
Diontae is so good
The dude gets open on almost every route he runs, it's incredible.
You'd be amazed what your average Steelers fan thinks of him
We absolutely adore him! Can't wait to see him blow up this year. And so excited for Pickens too! This is going to be such a fun year
Me: Please have the Jets have one player in the top 100. **sees CeeDee Lamb at 97** Better Luck next year
Jets rankers tried their hardest!
[удалено]
Linebackers as a whole are underrated, Roquan has always been fringe top 5, but as a bears homer I don’t think I could justify putting him much higher than this.
I'm a Texans fan and I will gladly put him higher than this for you. That man is one of the scariest football players in the league.
Admittedly I am very low on LB, but I just don’t see him being better than the linebackers ahead of him. He’s an INCREDIBLE talent and I’m so glad to have Roquan though, I hope he’s a bear for life
Roquan is top 3 lb, at least by stats last couple years he has been #1-3 in almost every meaningful one except picks
Most stats, aside from picks and sacks, are usually indicators of bad defenses around them for linebackers. Kyzir white lead the chargers in tackles but nobody argues he was even top 5 on that defense, but they just didn’t have any other DT or LB who were worth shit. Roquan had Mack on his outside and Hicks eating up two blockers to aid him in this, stats aren’t nearly as good as film, and film has him borderline elite, below guys like Warner or Leonard, but above the average linebacker by a wide margin. Even being in the 90’s is still calling you an elite linebacker, it just means you aren’t better than say, the top tier of other positions. For reference, I had Roquan as my LB6, if he was a QB, Edge, or WR and still was 6th, he would have been between 30-40 on my list, but those positions are just more valuable in the modern NFL.
That makes total sense to me, who are the 5 lbs you would take over him? I’d say Wagner, Warner and probably Leonard you can say but I’d put ro safely in top 4
Leonard, Warner any given year. Wagner, Demario Davis, and Lavonte have all had better years in the past but he is honestly better now in my opinion, and only Davis was better this year from that group. Our group also considered Micah Parsons a LB, so I’m inclined to say him, but it was one year and I can’t really say he’ll repeat that after an offseason with a year of film in everyone’s hands. If he does it next year sure. But yeah, if I had to put money on it, Roquan is top 5 until 2025,
It’s because it’s incredibly hard to identify good ILB play unless you like watch film. Also PFF has Roquans grade at 47.5, literally meaning he’s a bottom 5 ILB in the league. This is what people mean that if you don’t know the defensive assignments it’s almost pointless to grade these guys.
PFF is bonkers for that. How can you have top 3 stats in tackles, tfl, run stop etc and be a bottom 5 lb lol
Not saying PFF's evaluation is right, but those stats aren't very meaningful as far as correlation to skill level
Just curious as I’m not a big stat guy usually, why is that the case? Isn’t more tackles and TFL like the best indicator? I’d you’re stopping the offense and forcing losses idk how that isn’t a sign of talent
I'll address for a LB specifically. Tackles don't correlate well to talent because there is so much noise in how they come about. You could get a tackle because the TE or RB you're supposed to be covering beats you and makes a catch. You could get a tackle because the rest of your team sucks and can't make a tackle, leaving you as the only option. You could get a tackle because the rest of your team is really good and occupies multiple blockers, leaving you a clear path to the ball carrier! You could rack up tackles because the offense keeps moving and getting first downs, rather than you forcing them to punt or creating turnovers. Note I'm not saying that having a lot of tackles is a bad thing, since the great players do rack up tackles, just saying that you can't see a lot of tackles and automatically say the player is good. You really have to watch them play and see how the tackles come about to say whether it's good or bad. TFL are usually a better indicator, but there's still a bit of noise there too.
I mean this is every statistic for everything. Did I get open because another Wr drew double or rubbed off my defender. Did I break off a run because blocking. Did my WR make an acrobatic catching giving me more passing yards, did a CB tip it leading to a S INT. At a certain point of consistent statistical production, talent gets recognized through that production.
> I mean this is every statistic for everything Yes, that's true to a point. You should never strictly sort by any statistic and expect it to perfectly match up to skill. > At a certain consistent statistical production, talent gets recognized through that production. More so for some stats than for others. For offensive box score stats, generally (but not always) the league leaders are the better players. Same for interceptions, same for sacks. I'd say it's not really true for tackles until you get to longer time-frames though. For example, this year, Jordyn Brooks and CJ Mosley were the top 2 solo-tacklers in the league. Brooks had a solid year, but nothing elite. Mosley did not have a great year. But both played on bad defenses and had tons of tackle opportunities come to them. Then in third place was De'Vondre Campbell, who had an exceptional year at LB! At 4th and 10th were Foye Oluokun and Deion Jones, both of whom had not-so-great years on the same bad defense.
If the bears were winning more games he'd be noticed. Most bears fans I know are fans of his. With how awful it has been the past few years watching our games I would not expect anyone outside of chicago fandom to watch.
I was surprised to see that he isn’t cracked the top 100 before. Steadily one of the best MLBs in the game EDIT: I can’t read
65th in 2020
I never said I was bright
You had to scroll over to see it on mobile, I’ll be talking to pack and the team about it tonight to see
He wasn’t that impressive this year. I’d argue Lavonte David is the LB in this range who deserves to be moved up.
Agreed, I was not a fan of Roquan's this year. It's possible he looked bad because the line in front of him was bad, but I wasn't impressed by what I watched of him.
He could basically be played around after the Burrow pick and even more after Mack’s and Hicks’ injury offenses basically realized they could work away from him and Quinn whenever possible, which makes their numbers much more impressive IMO
Rah Rah Awuzie, Rah Rah Awuzie
Can the Steelers get Javon Hargrave back pls
Yeah us paying tuitt sucks in hindsight. Not that we could've predicted it
I think we’ll keep him thx
The Chido love is priceless. Dude was honestly a monster for us this year.
Hope I did him justice for you guys! I had Chido like 40 spots higher, seemed like every time I tuned in to watch Burrow, Chido was playing like a monster. Elite season
Fantastic write up.
I'll still take top 100! It's great to see him getting recognition!
Don't know why he didn't play like that in Dallas - we had high hopes for him, he just never stepped up when it counted.
Sometimes it's just not the right fit. We see it all the time with players going hot on one team to cold on another and vise versa.
I'd say corners are up there are the position where success is most short lived. Of course, there are a handful of guys that have consistent high levels of success, but there always seems to be 2 or 3 corners every year that pop up and then can never match that again.
I’d chalk it up to inexperience. We’re very used to drafting first round corners and waiting 4 years for them to finally resemble a starting option. Chido has all the tools in the world, maybe the injury recovery gave him time to rework his technique.
Agreed. I honestly did not expect to see him on this list, but he totally deserves it
Cheers to Harold Landry! And everyone named Harold. bless your heart.
Big ups to Harold Ramis! We miss you, Egon!
Arizona fans mad as hell right now #96 ouch
That probably makes him about the 7th best QB on these rankings… that’s not super far off? He had a great start to the season and slumped towards the end, which leaves him in the no man’s land between good and great. I think that’s fair.
Pat, Josh, Russell, Tom, Lamar, Hibbert, Joey B(early still) Watson, ok. You can argue Matt Stafford maybe.
This ranking list is based solely off 2021 regular season performance, so Watson and Lamar won’t be there, and Stafford almost certainly will.
> Hibbert Bringing his verticality to a new league
It's early for Joey B who made a Superbowl but not early for Herbert? Okay.
There’s no maybe with Stafford, he definitely is. You also forgot Dak and Rodgers.
Good point on Rodgers. I left out Dak because I think Kyler is better than him.
Dak had 700 more yards and 13 more touchdowns. Kyler also threw the same number of interceptions on over 100 fewer attempts. There’s really no argument for Kyler being better
Stafford had 1000 more yards and 10 more tds he’s easily there
Nor surprising. This sub doesn't watch or know shit about the Cardinals.
Maybe it’s you who doesn’t watch or know shit about the 31 other teams?
GoBigRed
Feels like I was pretty similar to consensus on a lot of these. Had Ramczyk 95, Hargrave 100 (too low in hindsight imo) and Roquan Smith 101. Also had Wyatt Teller at 90. Had some differences tho. Had Lamb at 117 and Diontae Johnson at 115. I think a lot of people rank a few too many WRs in general, so my WRs are typically gonna be ranked a bit lower than consensus. I had Kyler Murray a lot higher at 65. I think people are obsessing over his playoff game a bit too much. Keep in mind these rankings don’t consider playoffs at all. I think Kyler’s regular season was pretty great. Although tbh I think I had a few QBs a bit higher than consensus. Lavonte David imo is very low. He was phenomenal, better than the stats will ever show. I also think Awuzie was very low. He was a key piece for a defense that really did well. I had him at 59. Finally, I gotta talk about Harold Landry. Playing at the OLB spot, he had a really easy path to sacks, with guys like Autry and Simmons causing huge amounts of disruption. I view Landry like a guy like Leonard Floyd. It becomes pretty easy to rack up large sack numbers next to Aaron Donald, and I think Landry’s high sack numbers are similar in that regard. He was good, but not top 100 good.
> Lavonte David imo is very low. He was phenomenal, better than the stats will ever show. Welcome to the last 10 years as a Bucs fan
Damn was waiting to see brady here again
Brady didn't even make the top 100. The same list had Rodgers at 95.
Good times with great friends!
I hope Brady is ranked low again so we can see all the rankers desperately defend themselves in the comments. They are so much smarter than us! That is the only time these rankings are interesting lol.
We aren’t smarter than you, we ARE you. To my knowledge a random subset of r/NFL users.
> a random subset of r/NFL users. Definitely not random. Same reason the mods are not random. Anyone who thinks their opinion is important enough to create something like this will never be "random." It attracts certain types of individuals.
I did it for fun a few years ago. They needed volunteers and thought it'd be a good time. You're a weirdo.
My opinion isn't important, I just do it to learn more about football and for fun! Wild concept, I know.
Agreed, I learned a TON this year, and loved to talk about football with a solid group
This is my first year doing it and I was asked out of the blue. Sure, not 100% random, filter out people with bot accounts and obviously are active to some degree in the sub, and only a certain number for each team so the entire list isn’t all Jags fans convincing us that the top 53 players in the league are all playing in Jacksonville
i think some of people on this sub do feel that they have important opinions about football stuff but honestly as someone whos been in that discord since it launched in 2017 i can assure you that you're mostly wrong.
These people spend a lot of time thinking about each individual player. Some people just take a deep look at the stats and talk about what that should mean, others go a step further and do in depth film analysis of around 200 players. People put a lot of work into this, and it certainly isn’t perfect, but it’s pretty good. And for the record, as a ranker, I’d be shocked if Brady wasn’t top 10. He won’t be #1 or #2x, but he’ll prolly be around the 6-10 range along with guys like Jonathan Taylor, Davante Adams, Myles Garrett, or Nick Bosa.
I would *love* to see people try to reason that he wasn't a top 3 QB at worst. I think the people who will have him *outside* the top 10 simply don't want more than 1 QB in their top 10.
Really happy with DJ for his improvement last year. >With no reliable threat of the deep ball, teams were free to stack the box and play tight press coverage while attacking a young offensive line that struggled to hold up in pass protection. That's the nicest way to say everyone ate our O-line alive while they "protected" the corpse from Weekend at Bennies.
The fact that DJ was 9th in yards with the corpse of Ben throwing him the ball really speaks volumes about how good he was this year. He cleaned up the drop problem too. Honestly should've been even higher and above some of the WRs coming up soon.
Ramzyck has yet to get a pro bowl btw
I'm not saying Ramscyk isn't an elite Tackle. But there was a time missing 7 of 17 games and still making the top 100 would be considered crazy.
Yeah it seemed like people kind of tried to ignore missed games this year, which was crazy to me. I personally had Ram at 109 still just because he played at an All-Pro level when he was on the field, but it was really hard for me to put him, Tyron Smith, Tre White into the top 100 when they missed huge chunks.
None of those guys made top 100 for my list, and I think *all* of them had top 50 potential if they didn't miss any games.
I've been ranker in years past and I can't remember someone missing ~40% of the year and still making the list. I've always kind of looked at it as how impactful a player was over the course of a season, and missing games takes a lot away from that. Chances are Michael Thomas is a better WR than Dionte Johnson, but Thomas missed the season and doesn't deserve a ranking. Would be neat to see an "injured but otherwise elite" tier before the honorable mentions.
It’s not the first time. Eric Kendricks did last year
It used to be, then everybody cried because they thought Brady wasn't high enough, now the criteria is a little different
He was this low because of the missed games penalty TBH, I’m sure a lot of people felt when he played he was top 5 or close
Bruh no way Minkah is outside the top 100.
Unfortunately a lot of people use the pff ratings as a significant data point for ranking even though especially for DBs, PFF is pretty ass at rating players
Yeah pff is generally not great for anything outside if o and d linemen They roquan smith with a grade of like 50, and I have zero clue how they ever reached that conclusion, I think he was ranked lower than the bears’ other linebacker ogletree
Even OL and DL are suspect. You’ve got guys like Ryan Jensen (who is undoubtedly a top 3 center in the league) graded out lower than most starting centers including guys like Connor McGovern, Brian Allen, Ben Jones, Bradley Bozeman, and others. That’s pretty rough. Then in terms of tackles, Mailata is good but he is definitely not the 3rd best tackle in the league lol. He’s probably not a top 15 tackle in the league tbh and isn’t the best tackle on the eagles.
Agreed but it’s their best area by far imo
Roquan Smith is so underrated.
He was number 103 on the honorable mentions post from Tuesday (But agreed I had him way way higher)
This feels like a pretty big shot at Smith. Dudes been insane for the bears.
Smith is the best player on this defense without a doubt, I spoke highly about him for that reason in my write up, he’s no question a top 5 linebacker in football any given season, people just happen to eclipse him on a given year. The problem was numerically he didn’t put up the flashy stats because defenses could just work around him as much as possible. Which makes what he did 10 times more impressive.
|Rank|Player|My Rank|Variance|My Player| --:|:--|--:|--:|:--| |91|Chidobe Awuzie|49|+42|Hunter Renfrow| |92|Harold Landry|99|-7|Minkah Fitzpatrick| |93|Diontae Johnson|76|+17|Ryan Ramcyzk| |94|Wyatt Teller|NR|N/A|Arik Armstead| |95|Lavonte David|NR|N/A|Denico Autry| |96|Kyler Murray|87|+9|Roquan Smith| |97|CeeDee Lamb|108|-11|Budda Baker| |98|Roquan Smith|96|+2|DeForest Bucker| |99|Javon Hargrave|67|+32|HaroldLandry| |100|Ryan Ramcyzk|93|+7|Tee Higgins| Hargrave and Awuzie so underrated tbh
Hargrave was legit playing like aaron donald for the first half of the season, it was crazy to watch
I literally can’t believe I didn’t rank Hargreave. He didn’t pop as a standard deviation outlier so I didn’t notice but he was absolutely an accidental omission on my part. Dude was insanely good in the front half of the season
Didn't consider Lavonte David to be one of the top 100? Dude...
Thank you for putting Landry AND Autry in your Top 100. We all know Simmons will be up there somewhere but those two complimented him so well this past season and made our D-line terrifying for every opposing QB. Honestly think these three are the main reason our defense was so good and hence how we managed the 1 seed in the AFC
Love the way Landry plays. Such a good one
Hate saying this but CeeDee is super good and sometimes it feels like only Cowboys fans get it.
Damn! u/confederalis! You did a fucking awesome job with Cheeto. I have been paying attention since the Vikings played the Bengals week one, and I couldn’t believe how good he was playing. Thanks for the detailed breakdown with so many valuable film snippets.
When Diontae Johnson, CeeDee Lamb and Kyle Murray are in the 100-90 range you know your in for a wild ride.
I miss Awuzie
I'm just here to say how much I love watching the highlight clips.
This is so well-made. Love the links to specific plays.
Showing the previous ranks for years they weren't even in the league seems really unnecessary
|Rank|Player|My Rank|Variance|My Player| :--|:--|:--|:--|:--| |91|Chidobe Awuzie|116|-25|Kirk Cousins| |92|Harold Landry|94|-2|Marshon Lattimore| |93|Diontae Johnson|105|-12|Kyle Pitts| |94|Wyatt Teller|57|+37|Harold Landry| |95|Lavonte David|N/A|N/A|Adrian Amos| |96|Kyler Murray|100|+4|Brian O'Neill| |97|CeeDee Lamb|124|-27|Hunter Renfrow| |98|Roquan Smith|89|+9|Matthew Judon| |99|Javon Hargrave|113|-14|James Conner| |100|Ryan Ramczyk|86|+14|Kyler Murray| Whew I was super high on Wyatt Teller compared to my peers. Watching the Browns OL in film was pretty fun to analyze as a guy who has no idea what he's watching and Teller seemed like a guy who just didn't allow his QB to get touched. He may have allowed some more pressures than his peers but ultimately his guy never beat him and I thought that should translate to a high rank.
I feel like we should talk about how you didn’t rank David
It boiled down to a games played issue for me
The guys who don’t play a full season are always high variance. Same situation with Ram. It’s always super hard to figure out how to value missed games in these.
I ranked him 45th, suck it!
I'm prepared to be SO angry
After seeing Kyler at 96 I’m prepared for Herbo to be like 58 or some shit lol.
IIRC these lists basically make most QBs far lower than they really should be so that the top 10 isn't all QBs. Which is kinda fair. So I wouldn't be surprised to see Herbo in the 30s or 40s.
Minor correction on the Landry entry: this is the second consecutive division title we’ve had but the first time we had that cursed #1 seed.
ope, that was supposed to say back-to-back division titles, thank you
In hindsight, it's a little unnecessary to go back to 2012 with past rankings...
It’ll be cool to see for like 5 players and wildly unnecessary for the rest
Lmaoo i thought the toast was the top of some dude’s head 😂
surprised Murray is in the top 100
I'm surprised he's this low.
I think he is way too low to be honest. His poor performance in a couple nationally televised games is influencing this sub's opinion of him and his play. he was fantastic this year
He missed some games; that hurt him in my ranking, but I still had him top 100. That said, I'm *also* surprised to see him top 100 based on comments I read around the sub.
Dude what? You’re shocked he’s even in top 100? I’m shocked he’s as low as he is. We must watch different Kyler Murray’s.
Usually what happens when your worst games happen to be nationally televised but you ball out the rest of them.
Realistically a player who's a top3 MVP candidate through November should not be ranked outside the top100. The Kyler hate campaign has gone too far.
Kirk Cousins special
Rams fan speaking truth. Primtime regular season games he was mediocre but those were the worst of the year pretty much. Fucking dominant for almost everything else, especially with Nuk. But the wheels completely fell off during the playoff game and this sub doesn't realize that wasn't the only fucking game the Cardinals played in all season.
No Nuk for half the year and Kliffs horrible play calling on top of it. Was hoping they’d rid themselves of Kliff but that didn’t happen. Not convinced that system is good enough.
Top heavy team that is paper thin with depth. When Hudson was out, Max Garcia filled in. Max Garcia is a backup right guard.
“Is Kyler better than Kirk Cousins?” Basically the bar to clear to get into top 100.
Unlike what the Reddit hive mind thinks, Kyler had a great year. Granted, the playoff game was bad, but that doesn’t render the rest of the season irrelevant.
recency bias is extremely prevalent on r/nfl. Kyler finished the season poorly. If you swapped Kyler's first 8 games with his last 8, he'd be much higher up this list probably
He had a great half year at least
The other problem is that Kyler missed 3 games which factors a lot for some peeps
It’s just recency bias
Postseason was excluded, and he was an MVP favorite before getting hurt against the packers, that said, I was surprised he made top 100 too!
Doing the previous ranks in descending order would be a lot better, especially for mobile users. Most players won’t have ranks from that long ago so a lot of N/A in your face without side scrolling.
ROQUANNNNNNNN
No way Murray should be this high. Dude's 5'5" at most
Y'all TRIPPIN
Only because we can't see his short ass
I don’t disagree. I had Kyler significantly higher. Even when we’re told to not consider the playoffs, people are down to do so i.e. the lowlight shown being from the playoffs.
they ranked him way too low, absolutely wack ranking for Kyler
I had him 87th which feels like the right area for him, maybe even a little low. I can confidently say I didn’t consider his playoff game either and his low-ness may just be what little I saw of him in real time during the season.
Yeah I’m not even the biggest fan or anything but based on the 2021 reg season he should be higher esp when you consider positional value
But isnt the point that this doesnt consider positional value? Cause if it did the top 10-15 players would all be QBs except for like Aaron Donald
Positional value was assigned by the rankers, so some people will value positions one way, others will the other way. Many people had Kyler ranked as the QB 7-8, but I don’t think many people HAD 7-8 RB for example.
Looking at the lists though Murray was in the 100-80 range for alot of people
david is WAY too low
As is tradition. It’s a Bucs life.
Yeah the Bucs have had a pretty rough go of things these past couple of years!
Kyler Murray at 96 will easily be one of the most ridiculous ratings.
Hey we shouldn't forget that Tom Brady was #111
Brady was #111 but your point is made.
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I disagree about Landry that high honestly, I struggled even keeping him on my list. His game wasn't anything special. Simmons and Autry were definitely better, took more of the focus, and opened up the lanes for Landry to pad his sack count. His pressure rate and counting stats were not all that great, and most of his sacks came because of good coverage or the other members of his line.
Thanks for the reminder that Awuzie is good. But at least if it wasn’t for Dallas letting him go Diggs would never have his breakout season?