2024 NFLTR Top 100: 40-31

By
Logan Ulrich
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Our 2024 NFLTR Top 100 Players series continues today with players 40-31.

Amon-Ra St. Brown

This is the third year of the series giving our take on the league’s top 100 players, compiled rigorously using both traditional and advanced statistics, awards, positional value, career trajectory and a dash of intuition.

We’ll be rolling these out over the next couple of weeks to pass the time until training camp, so keep an eye out for the rest of the 2024 NFLTR Top 100!

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40: Falcons G Chris Lindstrom

For the second year in a row, Lindstrom finished as the top-graded guard by PFF, even if his overall grade was a tier or two below his remarkable 2022 season. Lindstrom’s bread and butter is run blocking where he was particularly effective over the past two seasons in former HC Arthur Smith‘s run-heavy offense. His 87.5 grade in the run game was third among all guards per PFF. 

Lindstrom isn’t quite as dominant in pass protection but he’s still one of the best in football. He gave up 15 total pressures in 2023 per PFF, which was six more than last season but still good for 11th-best in the league. Lindstrom’s 97.2 efficiency rating in true pass sets was No. 9 among all guards last year. At 27 years old and in the middle of his prime, Lindstrom looks like a cornerstone player for the Falcons for years to come. 

39: Raiders WR Davante Adams

Entering the 2023 season, Adams had a legitimate claim as the No. 1 receiver in football despite intense competition for the title. He was dominant, pure and simple, racking up 338 catches, more than 4,400 yards receiving and 43 touchdowns from 2020 through 2022. He was traded from the Packers to the Raiders and didn’t skip a beat going from Aaron Rodgers to Derek Carr. 

Things changed last year. The quarterback play got worse, as Carr was replaced by Jimmy Garoppolo who was replaced by fourth-round rookie Aidan O’Connell. The coaching staff was fired midseason. Adams played all 17 games but Netflix’s Receiver documentary showed he was battling through a serious shoulder sprain from Week 4 on. Adams still topped 100 catches but his production dipped to 1,144 yards and eight touchdowns — strong numbers for most players but weaker than what the league has been accustomed to seeing out of Adams. 

The surrounding environment certainly had a role, and it wouldn’t be the first time we’ve seen an elite receiver’s production drop due to factors outside of his control. But was it all on the offense around Adams, or was the 31-year-old vet starting to lose a step?

ESPN’s receiver tracking metrics pegged Adams for his lowest overall score and his lowest open score since 2017. His PFF receiving grade dropped to its lowest since 2017 as well, and after averaging 5.1 YAC/catch in the previous four seasons, that number dipped to 3.3 in 2023. Adam’s drop percentage was the highest it’s been since 2019 and his contested catch percentage was the lowest it’s been since 2017. After forcing 29 missed tackles over the last two years, Adams forced just eight missed tackles in 2023. 

The shoulder injury likely had something to do with this, especially the lower yards after catch numbers. Adams was also in the slot for just 17 percent of his snaps in 2023 after seeing slot rates over 30 percent for the previous four seasons — likely to make room for WR Jakobi Meyers who was signed in free agency last offseason and also works best out of the slot. Adams is the more capable of those two players at winning routes from outside, but it curtailed some of the easier avenues to production he had in prior years. 

The most worrying drop, however, is Adams’ open score, as that’s the stat that seems most likely to signal a decrease in athleticism or effectiveness ahead of a possible decline. That said, Adams still had the 17th-best open score in football, so even a slightly diminished Adams could remain one of the best receivers in football. 

38: Jaguars OLB Josh Hines-Allen

If you were paying attention, Hines-Allen — who went by Josh Allen until very recently and thankfully for database operators everywhere decided to differentiate his name from the quarterback in Buffalo — had his breakout last season. He was a disruptive force who flew under the radar because he finished the season with only seven sacks. However, he was sixth in the league in total pressures per PFF with 77. Focusing on just his sacks undersold his impact. 

But in 2023, Hines-Allen took yet another jump. PFF credited him with 90 total pressures (fifth in the NFL) and his sack total rocketed up to 17.5. His win rate went from under 15 percent to over 20 percent, meaning he was more efficient with his pass rush opportunities. Hines-Allen also had 17 tackles for loss which ranked eighth in the entire league and set a new career high with 40 stops, per PFF. 

Jacksonville finally rewarded Hines-Allen with a lucrative, $28.25 million per year deal this offseason that makes him the second-highest-paid edge rusher in football. It’s a deal that says Hines-Allen is no longer just an ascending player, but he’s arrived as one of the league’s top edge rushers. 

37: Lions WR Amon-Ra St. Brown

St. Brown has come a long way since sliding to the fourth round of the 2021 NFL Draft, and he put up a gargantuan year in 2023 as the Lions broke a 30-year playoff win drought. He finished tied for second in the NFL in receptions with 119 and third in the league in receiving yards with 1,515, scoring 10 touchdowns in the process. He made his second career Pro Bowl and was named first-team AP All-Pro. 

Like many of the league’s top receivers, St. Brown does most of his damage out of the slot where he’s a magnet for the ball. He tied the record for receptions in a player’s first two seasons and his 119 receptions in 2023 left him six away from the record through three. Per PFF, St. Brown’s 21 missed tackles forced ranked fourth among all wideouts. Once again, St. Brown saw the majority of his action from the slot with 55.3 percent of his snaps. 

But St. Brown also showed off a more well-rounded dimension to his game. That slot percentage was the lowest of his career and he had a career-high 43.6 percent of his snaps out wide. After drawing some criticism for just being a possession wideout in prior seasons, St. Brown raised his average depth of target from 6.7 to 8.0. Most importantly, St. Brown beat press coverage 75.6 percent of the time, per Reception Perception’s Matt Harmon, a new career high and a key milestone for success. 

Just like the Lions as a team, St. Brown officially announced his presence as a force to be reckoned with last season. 

36: 49ers RB Christian McCaffrey

Out of all the talented skill position players on the 49ers’ offense, McCaffrey is the one who’s become the centerpiece of the operation. The fact that he’s equally proficient as a runner and a receiver is a big part of that, giving 49ers HC Kyle Shanahan plenty of ways to get the ball in his hands. McCaffrey led the NFL with 1,459 yards rushing and 14 touchdowns while also pulling down 67 catches for 564 yards and seven more scores. He finished with over 2,000 yards from scrimmage for the second time in his career and was named the 2023 Offensive Player of the Year.

It’s tough to wax too many superlatives about McCaffrey. He’s everything a team could dream of having in a running back: tough, quick, strong enough to break tackles and make plays in short yardage, fast enough to rip off big plays, outstanding route runner, great hands, high football character and IQ, you name it. The only negative about McCaffrey is the position he plays and the longevity concerns that come with it. McCaffrey has broken the mold for running backs in a lot of ways, maybe he’ll break the expected aging curve for the position as well. 

35: Giants LT Andrew Thomas

A serious hamstring injury that came when chasing down a blocked field goal sidelined Thomas for seven games last year and hampered him in others, robbing the Giants of their best offensive lineman in a year when the unit struggled mightily. Thomas saw his pass block efficiency dip from 97.9 to 97.1 percent and his true pass set efficiency drop from 97 percent to 95.7, per PFF. He gave up four sacks in both 2022 and 2023, but that total came on about half the snaps last year. 

That said, even a hobbled Thomas was one of the best tackles in football when he was on the field. Those efficiency ratings were still 18th and 12th out of 86 tackles with enough snaps to qualify. Thomas was 11th in the league in ESPN’s pass block win rate at 92 percent. 

A healthy Thomas is one of the reasons the Giants are more optimistic internally about the upcoming season, as he’s established himself as one of the top tackles in the NFL and potentially the face of the next generation at the position. 

34: 49ers WR Brandon Aiyuk

Aiyuk is making it harder and harder to ignore his place in the pecking order of NFL wide receivers. There is a ton of competition for one ball in San Francisco’s offense, with talents like McCaffrey, TE George Kittle and WR Deebo Samuel to feed. Aiyuk’s targets actually went down from 114 to 105 from 2022 to 2023. 

Yet thanks to a huge jump in efficiency, Aiyuk had the best season yet of his career. He recorded 75 catches for 1,342 yards (17.9 YPC) and seven touchdowns, making the absolute most of the opportunities he was afforded. After finishing No. 7 in the league in ESPN’s receiver tracking metrics’ overall score at 77, Aiyuk leaped all the way up to first in the league with a score of 96 this past season. 

Aiyuk has all the talent and ability of a true No. 1 receiver who could be one of the best in the league — which is likely why his camp is pushing the 49ers so hard not to take a discount. He just doesn’t get No. 1 receiver targets in San Francisco’s crowded offense. 

33: Eagles QB Jalen Hurts

Hurts narrowly finished second in the MVP voting in 2022 due to an injury clipping his wings down the stretch and causing him to miss two games. For the first 11 games of the 2023 season, it looked like Hurts and the Eagles were in the process of rolling all the way to the Super Bowl again and giving Hurts another shot at winning the award. Hurts had 18 passing touchdowns and 11 rushing scores while Philadelphia was 10-1 with wins against the Chiefs, Bills, Cowboys, Dolphins and Rams, among others. 

The Eagles of course fell apart down the stretch and Hurts wasn’t immune to the greater struggles of the team. He had just five touchdowns to five interceptions in the last six games and accumulated four rushing touchdowns. On the season, his interception percentage of 2.8 more than doubled the prior season and was a new career high. 

There were a lot of factors at play. Even at the height of their powers over the past two seasons, the Eagles have not been particularly complex on offense. Defenses started getting a better key on how to blitz the Eagles and Hurts either didn’t have the ability or the answers within the offense to counter the pressure. Nate Tice did an excellent post-mortem of all of the issues. There were also injuries to both Hurts and the supporting cast.

But the 2023 season also revealed some ways in which Hurts has plateaued after a meteoric rise to start his career. He’s still a quality quarterback and has the ability to be a franchise starter, but there are holes in his game he either has to shore up or the Eagles have to figure out how to work around. Tice pinpointed a couple of those, such as being more willing to work the middle of the field. Hurts also had the second-highest percentage of pressures that were his responsibility, not the offensive line, in the estimation of PFF, which charted him as at fault for 23 percent of his pressures. 

Hurts also had the eighth-best pressure-to-sack percentage of 41 qualifying quarterbacks, so while he invites more pressure than other quarterbacks, he also gets away from it better than most. His legs are a huge part of his game, including in short yardage where the infamous “Tush Push” has been the NFL’s most unstoppable short yardage play due in no small part to how powerful a runner Hurts is. One of the subplots of the upcoming season will be how that play looks without Hall of Fame C Jason Kelce, but my guess would be that the Eagles continue to be effective with the play. 

32: Colts DT DeForest Buckner

Even with the retirement of Rams DT Aaron Donald, the NFL is in a great place when it comes to the talent at defensive tackle. Teams are prioritizing the position in a way they haven’t and there’s a big batch of ascending stars. With so much young and exciting talent around the league, some of the old guard players like Buckner can get lost in the shuffle. That would be a mistake, especially in Buckner’s case when he continued to play at a high level in 2023. 

For the sixth straight season, Buckner topped the seven sack mark and put eight more notches in the QB takedown belt last year. He had 11 tackles for loss, giving him double-digit TFLs for the fifth time in the past six years, and added two forced fumbles and a fumble six. The 6-7, 300-pound Buckner was a menace even if he didn’t win his pass rush, knocking down seven passes with his pterodactyl wingspan. That was Plan B, though. Buckner’s 17 percent pass rush win rate was the fifth-best mark for all defensive tackles on ESPN’s leaderboard. 

Entering his age-30 season, Buckner has been a model of consistency. He’s notched between 48 and 66 total pressures every single year of his career since he was a rookie, per PFF, and there’s little reason to expect anything different in 2024 — which is why the Colts paid up with a two-year, $46 million extension to ensure it wouldn’t be his final season in Indianapolis. 

31: 49ers LB Fred Warner

Warner has established himself as the best linebacker in the NFL for a few seasons now, but the greats keep raising the bar higher and that’s exactly what Warner did in 2023. The veteran set new career bests with four interceptions, four forced fumbles and 11 pass deflections. He also chipped in 2.5 sacks and six tackles for loss with 132 total tackles. 

2023 was also the best year of Warner’s career in terms of PFF grade, for whatever that’s worth. If the grades aren’t your thing, PFF gave him high marks in some of their other key stats, particularly pass coverage which is his specialty. Warner’s QB rating allowed of 82.3 was the seventh-best of any linebacker in football and the second-best of his career. He also had 17 pressures and 56 stops, both of which were the second-highest marks of his career. 

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