2023 NFLTR Top 100 Players: 80-71

By
Logan Ulrich
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Every summer, the NFL releases a list of the top 100 NFL players as voted on by the players, supposedly. And every summer, the results kick up their fair amount of controversy. 

So we figured we’d chime in with our take again. Last year was the first year of the NFLTR Top 100, using a rigorous process that factored in basic and advanced stats, awards, career trajectory, positional value and of course the highly scientific gut check. This year we’re back with the 2023 NFLTR Top 100 Players.

We’ll be rolling these out over the rest of the summer to pass the time until training camp, so be sure to keep an eye out for the rest of the list!

Also, here are some links to explanations for some of the non-traditional statistics used to assess players: 

80: Seahawks QB Geno Smith

Smith was one of the best stories of the entire 2022 season. Written off as a bust as a former second-round pick by the Jets back in 2013, Smith had bounced around to a few different teams as a backup quarterback before landing in Seattle. Some solid spot starts in 2021 earned him a chance to compete to replace Russell Wilson, but he was considered a heavy underdog to Drew Lock who was acquired as part of the Wilson trade. Smith didn’t completely pull ahead of Lock until the latter missed his designated start in the preseason due to COVID-19.

But as Smith said after beating Wilson in Week 1, he didn’t write back to his critics. He went on to have a career season with 4,282 passing yards, 30 touchdowns, 11 interceptions, a nearly 70 percent completion percentage, a 9-8 record and a playoff berth for a team many people expected to contend for the No. 1 overall pick. 

With the way he came out of relative oblivion, it’s natural for there to be quite a bit of skepticism about Smith’s long-term prospects. It felt like a lot of people were waiting for him to turn back into a pumpkin until about halfway through last season. There was nothing fluky about what Smith was doing last season, though. He led the NFL in completion percentage and he wasn’t just racking up those numbers on checkdowns. His deep completion percentage (throws of 20+ yards) ranked fourth in the NFL, per PFF. He led the league with 15 touchdowns on deep throws and his big-time throw percentage of 40 percent also led the NFL. In large part because of his deep passing, he led the NFL in completion percentage over expected. 

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Smith was legitimately one of the two or three best deep passers in football in 2022 and played like a top-ten quarterback by most metrics. As illustrated, he was both great in the pocket and also showed some of the dynamic mobility required from modern quarterbacks, rushing for 366 yards. He wasn’t perfect by any means. His efficiency started to tail off later in the year, he was sacked 46 times and his turnover-worthy play percentage of 4.2 percent was 26th out of 31 quarterbacks with at least 300 dropbacks. But the good far outweighs the bad and there are no glaring red flags in terms of aspects of his career year being unsustainable. 

79: Seahawks WR Tyler Lockett

2022 was the fourth straight 1,000-yard season for Lockett who has been one of the most reliable and consistent receivers in the NFL for a few years now. He might also still be one of the most underrated. At 5-10 and listed at 182 pounds, Lockett is as good a route runner as you’d expect for someone with his speed and quickness. ESPN’s receiver tracking metrics gave him an open score of 95 in 2022 which was second-best in the entire league and a career-high for ESPN’s data range that goes back to 2017. 

But Lockett’s real trump card is his reliability at the catch point despite his diminutive build. He has an uncanny ability to reel the ball in from impossible angles and contort his body to meet the NFL’s criteria for a completed catch. Last year, his catch score of 79 was tied for eighth best out of 111 qualifying pass catchers. His career catch score is 79 as well, which is good enough to tie for the third-best combined mark in ESPN’s six-year dataset. 

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Both Smith and Wilson are fantastic deep-ball throwers. But it’s probably fair to attribute some of their success to getting to throw to a receiver like Lockett. 

78: Eagles CB James Bradberry

Don’t let Bradberry’s last play — a pivotal holding call in the Super Bowl — overshadow the tremendous season the veteran cornerback had. Per PFF, Bradberry was one of the stingiest cornerbacks in coverage last season with just a 46.9 completion percentage allowed. That was fifth-best among all cornerbacks but Bradberry did it while being targeted 98 times, sixth most in the league. That makes his 51.8 passer rating allowed even more impressive, and considering that led the entire NFL, it was already pretty darn impressive to begin with. 

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PFF tracked Bradberry with 21 forced incompletions which also led all corners. He finished with double-digit pass deflections again which he’s done his entire seven-year career and his 52 PDs over the past three years are the most of any player. He’s never been a big interception getter but he’s always been at minimum a solid cover corner with a high floor and a high ceiling that he showed this past year. And yet somehow Bradberry continues to be underrated, even by the rest of the NFL.

77: Packers OL Elgton Jenkins

Jenkins was coming off of a torn ACL last season and it was apparent earlier on in the year, particularly with the team asking him to play right tackle. He shifted back inside to guard about halfway through the season and found his stride, though. He ended the year as PFF’s No. 12 overall guard, about the same spot he ranked in 2021 even though his grade was 10 points lower. He also ranked No. 8 in ESPN’s run block win rate at the position at 75 percent. One of Jenkins’ biggest assets continues to be his ability to play any position on the line at a fairly high level, even if Green Bay ideally keeps him locked in at guard for a while. 

76: Patriots OLB Matt Judon

In his first year with the Patriots in 2021, Judon recorded his first career double-digit sack season and asserted himself as a clear leader for New England on defense. He edged out a spot on our Top 100 list at No. 99 last year. This year, Judon was even better, notching 15.5 sacks and being named to his fourth-straight Pro Bowl. 

Judon wins more with ferocity and effort than high-level athleticism but he’s a throwback football player who does a lot of things well, which is a perfect fit in New England’s defense. The Patriots’ scheme helps generate pressure opportunities for him and he’s good enough to take advantage. Judon was 11th in the NFL with 69 total pressures, per PFF, while his win rate of 11.7 percent was 44th. Brandon Thorn of the Trench Warfare Substack found something similar in his charting, with Judon grading well in overall pressure but lower once his production was broken out into high quality vs low-quality pressures. 

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75: Jets WR Garrett Wilson

The reigning offensive rookie of the year, Wilson was an instant impact player despite fighting through the morass of offensive circumstances the Jets found themselves mired in during the 2022 season. He commanded an imposing 147 targets, eighth-most in the league, but caught just 56.5 percent of those for 83 receptions, 1,103 yards and four touchdowns. Jets QB Zach Wilson‘s struggles likely played a hand in that, though two other receivers in the top 10 for targets also had sub-60 percent catch rates. 

Wilson was at home right away as a route runner in the NFL, and his unique movement ability also aided him after the catch. His 77 open score via ESPN was 15th in the NFL last year and his YAC score was good enough for the upper quartile. He absolutely has the tools to become a top-tier receiver and 2022 was a banner start. 

74: Commanders DT Daron Payne

Payne came into the 2022 season on a mission after Washington declined to extend him in the offseason and made him play out the final year of his contract on the fifth-year option. What proceeded was probably pretty close to a win-win for both sides, with the Commanders getting a career year out of Payne and Payne getting a massive, $22.5 million a year deal as a reward this offseason. 

The big number of course for Payne was 11.5 sacks, which is an outstanding number for a defensive tackle and far and away a career-high, even if he’d flashed some pass-rush ability in the past. He recorded 49 total pressures as tracked by PFF, also a career high and ninth among defensive tackles. Like a lot of other defensive linemen in this range of the list, Payne wasn’t the most efficient player. His pass rush productivity lagged a little despite the high sack total, and PFF charted his win rate at only 8.4 percent. I would bet against him cracking double-digit sacks in 2023 but that doesn’t mean he’s not an outstanding player. 

One other thing worth addressing. PFF was fairly low on Payne, grading him 58th out of 127 qualifiers and primarily dinging him for poor run defense and bad tackling. He was charted with 10 missed tackles and a 17.2 percent missed tackle rate, which is quite poor. Payne was still productive against the run, though, with 28 total stops, 12th out of over 150 qualifiers, and a solid stop percentage. You could look at all of these numbers in totality and surmise that Payne was selling out for splash plays in a contract year. It’s also worth noting the difference in Payne’s PFF grades going back in his career. In 2019 and 2020 he graded out as a solid run defender but PFF didn’t think much of his pass rushing. In 2021 and 2022, his pass rush grades took a noticeable jump while his run defense grades fell off of a cliff. It’s also possible the coaching staff is asking him to do different things compared to earlier in his career. 

73: Saints LB Demario Davis

The ageless wonder, Davis was just as good in his age-33 season as he has been since arriving in New Orleans at the age of 29, which is when most NFL linebackers are finishing up their peak years. Not Davis. He earned his fourth straight All-Pro recognition and finally earned his first Pro Bowl after everyone else caught up to the AP voters. A new career-high of 6.5 sacks in 2022 likely helped his case. His splash plays were also in the ranges the Saints have become accustomed to seeing from Davis. He had 10 tackles for loss to get into double digits for the sixth straight year, broke up six pass attempts and intercepted his third career pass. 

Oh yeah, and despite being the oldest off-ball linebacker in the NFL last season, Davis was the only linebacker, period, to play all 100 percent of the snaps on defense. 

72: Vikings OLB Danielle Hunter

Hunter looked poised for greatness with back-to-back seasons of 14.5 sacks before injuries caused his career to detour. He missed the entire 2020 season due to a herniated disc, then was limited to seven games in 2021 before a torn pectoral ended his season. Last year he played all 17 games, and while he started out slow he ended up finding his stride and getting back into double-digit sack territory with 10.5. 

Now Hunter’s entering a contract year with the Vikings and looking for a well-deserved raise, one which the team has some reservations about given their other financial commitments and Hunter’s injury history. They should not have any reservations about Hunter’s production on the field because the veteran looked to be well on his way to returning to prominence as an impact edge rusher. In 2022, Hunter was eighth in the league among edge rushers according to PFF with 76 total pressures, tied for 10th with 13 sacks and fourth with 51 hurries. He racked up those opportunities on the second-most pass rush opportunities of any player but still graded out extremely well in Brandon Thorn’s true pressure rate project. Thorn charted Hunter with five “rare” pressures, which are reps with an exceptional degree of difficulty to create pressure against strong opponents. That tied for the league lead. 

Hunter will be going into his ninth season but will still be only 28 years old. He should still have plenty of high-quality football left in front of him, whether it’s in Minnesota or for another team. 

71: 49ers WR Brandon Aiyuk

Even though wide receiver is an important position (and becoming more and more important each year), they still are reliant on a lot of factors outside of their control for production. Aiyuk’s a great example because on the surface he looks like a nice, young ascending No. 2 receiver. He turned in a solid rookie season, then was up and down during his second year before ultimately taking a step forward to close it out. He had the classic Year 3 breakout in 2022 where he topped 1,000 yards receiving and led the team with WR Deebo Samuel banged up for part of the year. 

A deeper look shows that Aiyuk might be on the verge of becoming one of the NFL’s best receivers, however. Matt Harmon, who charts wide receiver success at Reception Perception for all routes, not just when they’re targeted, has been beating the drum for Aiyuk as an underrated player and a future superstar if the circumstances align. He has the size, speed and route-running ability to be a legitimate No. 1 receiver. 

ESPN’s receiver tracking metrics had Aiyuk as the No. 7 overall receiver in 2022, with an open score of 81 that tied for ninth in the NFL with Vikings WR Justin Jefferson and Raiders WR Davante Adams. He was also above-average in catch score and yards after catch, though when it comes to the latter category it’s really Samuel and then everyone else. Aiyuk might not see a huge boost in production in 2023 because the 49ers offense has a lot of mouths to feed between him, Samuel, RB Christian McCaffrey and TE George Kittle. He’s not a talent you should sleep on, though.

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