July is the driest month of the year when it comes to NFL news, which makes it the perfect time for something like a top 100 players list. For the fourth straight year, we’re happy to bring you our 2025 NFLTR Top 100 Players. 

We’re not the only outlet that does a top 100 — NFL Media has done one with at least some democratic input from current players since 2011 — but our goal is to give more credit to players and positions that are often easy to overlook, especially in the trenches. We build it using traditional and advanced statistics, awards, positional value, career trajectory and a good old-fashioned dash of the eye test. Our list won’t be perfect but the goal is to give as much credit where it’s due as possible. 

We’ll be rolling this list out over the next couple of weeks, so keep checking back for updates to our 2025 NFLTR Top 100 Players list. 

• 100-91
• 90-81
• 80-71
• 70-61
• 60-51

Resources: 

• Pro Football Reference
• QB advanced stats
• Win rates from ESPN for OL and DL
• PFF advanced stats (grades, pass rush productivity, blocking efficiency, coverage stats)
• ESPN WR tracking metrics
• Past NFLTR Top 100s

50 – Steelers DL Cameron Heyward

There were a couple of obituaries written about Heyward’s career following a rough 2023 season that ended up being proven premature. Healthy again in 2024, Heyward rebounded to his iron-man status despite being 35 years old, starting all 17 games and playing over 800 snaps. He had a vintage season, recording eight sacks, 12 tackles for loss and a new career-high of 11 batted passes. Voters rewarded Heyward with his fourth first-team All Pro honors and seventh Pro Bowl. 

Maybe it was just a “dead cat bounce” and the injury bug could bite Heyward again this year, but the veteran showed no real signs of slowing down despite his age. His 60 total pressures tied for fifth-best, per PFF, and he was No. 7 in both pass rush productivity and win rate. His 47 stops were not just in line with his typical career production; they actually tied a new career high for Heyward. Some players are just exceptions and there’s well over a decade of production saying Heyward is a special player. 

49 – Browns CB Denzel Ward

There weren’t a lot of bright spots for the Browns in 2024 but the play of Ward was an exception. He had an outstanding season, picking off two passes and leading the entire NFL with 19 pass deflections. It wasn’t a coincidence that 2024 was also the healthiest year of Ward’s career. He still hasn’t played a full season since entering the league but his 16 games in 2024 set a new career-high. Ward was voted to the Pro Bowl for the fourth time in seven years; an acknowledgement of how well he played despite all of the dysfunction around him that would have dragged down a lot of other cornerbacks (and did drag down some of his teammates).

Cleveland’s defense under DC Jim Schwartz has put a lot on Ward’s plate as a heavy man coverage scheme the past two years, and it’s amazing how well he’s risen to the challenge. His forced incompletion rate of 24 percent was No. 2 among all corners per PFF last year. Ward also allowed just 53.5 percent of the passes targeted at him to be completed after a 51.5 percent mark the previous year. For his career, Ward has a stellar 54.3 percent completion percentage allowed across seven seasons. For a position defined so much by volatility, even among the best players, that’s an incredible number. 

48 – Broncos G Quinn Meinerz

Before this past season, Meinerz might have been best known for “The Belly.” He caught attention during the pre-draft process as a relative unknown out of Wisconsin-Whitewater because of his tendency to wear his jersey high and let it all hang out. He carried that habit with him to Denver, but also backed it all up by being a heck of a football player. Meinerz has started 56 of 68 possible games for the Broncos in the past four years and had his best season as a pro in 2024, earning first-team AP All Pro honors as the best player on a Broncos offensive line that was one of the best in the league. 

Meinerz was a force in both pass protection and run blocking. His 99 percent efficiency rating was No. 1 among all guards according to PFF last year and he was credited with just 12 allowed pressures and one sack. ESPN had him No. 3 in the league with a pass block win rate of 97 percent. In the run game, Meinerz had the third-highest grade among all guards per PFF. Still just 26 years old, Meinerz is in the prime of his career and one of many, many reasons a lot of football analysts are high on the Broncos entering 2025. 

47 – Jaguars OLB Josh Hines-Allen

The Jaguars as a whole took a big step backward on defense, including against the run, and Hines-Allen was unfortunately part of the problem, dipping from 77 stops combined over the previous two seasons to 27 in 2024. After a 17.5 sack explosion in 2023, Hines-Allen fell back in line with his career average in 2024 with eight sacks. 

Once again, though, just looking at the sack numbers underrates his impact on the game. He wasn’t as dominant as in 2023 when he had 90 total pressures but the Jaguars were also playing from behind a lot more in 2024. Hines-Allen still ranked 15th in the NFL in total pressures, per PFF, with 63. Out of 119 qualifying edge rushers, he ranked 22nd in pass rush productivity (counts pressures, hits and sacks with more weight given to hits and sacks) and 15th with a 15.9 percent win rate. New Jaguars DC Anthony Campanile still has one of the top edge rushers in the league at his disposal with Hines-Allen. 

46 – Chiefs C Creed Humphrey

Humphrey made a run at the crown of the NFL’s top center from the very beginning of his NFL career, finishing as PFF’s No. 1 player at the position in his first two years in 2021 and 2022. After Eagles C Jason Kelce retired after the 2023 season, Humphrey’s grip on that title tightened. He’s been elite his whole career but somehow took things to another level in 2024. PFF credited Humphrey with just seven pressures allowed all year and a titanium-clad efficiency rating of 99.5 percent. ESPN’s pass block win rate was a tick lower than that but Humphrey was still sixth among all interior linemen, both centers and guards, with 96 percent. He was equally dominant in the run game with a 90.5 run blocking grade from PFF. From a pure all-around perspective, there’s not a center playing better than Humphrey right now. 

45 – Chargers LT Rashawn Slater

Slater returned to the Pro Bowl for the second time in his four years following a slight rough patch the past two years after an outstanding rookie debut. The 26-year-old reasserted himself as one of the top young tackles in football and his all-around game is an excellent fit for the Chargers’ run-heavy offense. Slater finished 10th among all tackles in ESPN’s run block win rate with a mark of 79 percent, and he had PFF’s seventh-highest run blocking grade. 

He was great as a pass protector too, allowing just 26 total pressures on the year and three sacks. Slater’s progress was especially evident in true pass sets, one of PFF’s splits that represent the hardest blocking assignments when defenders have no threat of the run or play-action to slow them down. He cut his pressures allowed from the previous season by half and upgraded his efficiency by a full percentage point, finishing tied for 10th-best among all tackles at 96.7 percent. He’s due for an extension in the near future that should keep him locked in on the blind side in Los Angeles for years to come. 

44 – Eagles DT Jalen Carter

Carter’s playing time rocketed up in 2024 with the void created from the retirement of DT Fletcher Cox, jumping from 599 snaps in his rookie year to 1,067. Though four playoff games factor into the big total, Carter still went from 51 percent of the snaps as a rookie to 84 percent. His efficiency didn’t make a matching jump and there is still a fair amount of room for improvement in some of Carter’s numbers. For instance, he had 4.5 sacks instead of six and did not place into the top of ESPN’s pass rush win rate leaderboard after doing so as a rookie. 

But players and coaches around the league can’t stop raving about Carter and his potential as a dominant force in the middle of the Eagles’ defense for years to come. Carter ranked third in the NFL in total pressures for interior defenders with 75 according to PFF’s charting. The service also gave him seven sacks which equaled his number from last year and a 12.9 percent win rate that was 10th-best. Carter also forced two more fumbles, batted down six passes and increased both his tackles for loss, quarterback hits and defensive stops as he continued his development into one of the league’s premier defensive talents. 

43 – Texans DE Will Anderson Jr. 

Anderson was a Day 1 star for the Texans and won the Defensive Rookie of the Year award in 2023. While he didn’t necessarily take a big step forward as a pass rusher in Year 2, he maintained the already high floor he’d set for himself and was a foundational piece of a ferocious Texans pass rush that ranked fourth in the league last year with 49 sacks. Anderson’s total pressure numbers dipped slightly in his second season, going from 68 to 60 while playing one fewer game. However, Anderson converted those pressures into sacks at a much higher rate, going from seven as a rookie to 11 in Year 2. PFF was even more generous because the service doesn’t split out half sacks, bumping Anderson’s total up to 16. 

ESPN charted Anderson with a 22 percent pass rush win rate after putting him at an outstanding 26 percent as a rookie, but that was still good enough to be the seventh-best figure among all edge rushers. He also took a step forward as a run defender — and he was already a fairly effective one as a rookie. Anderson had 16 tackles for loss, 30 stops per PFF and forced a fumble. 

42 – Rams QB Matthew Stafford

Few quarterbacks are held in as high regard among their peers as Stafford. Once you get past all the recent MVPs who make up the consensus elite tier, Stafford quickly emerges as a favorite at the top of the second tier — even though he’s 37 and even though his numbers dipped across the board last year. Stafford has thrown for 24 and 20 touchdowns in the past two years while coming in under 4,000 passing yards each season. Last year, he was near the middle of the pack in a lot of important categories: 

• 13th in adjusted net yards per attempt
• 12th in QBR
• 16th in EPA/completion percentage over expected composite
• 18th in PFF’s big-time throw percentage (4.2 percent, well under his career average of 5.2)
• 32nd in turnover-worthy play percentage, also via PFF

However, when it comes to the big moments, the money downs and the high degree of difficulty throws, Stafford’s best is still as good as anyone else’s. His success rate of 50.1 percent was eighth in the league, pointing to this dynamic. From an intangible perspective, the Rams don’t pull out of a 1-4 start last year to finish 10-7 and make the playoffs without Stafford, and they came painfully close to beating an outstanding Eagles team in the divisional round thanks to Stafford’s late heroics. The respect Stafford still has among his peers speaks volumes and is worth overlooking the stats to some degree. 

41 – Giants WR Malik Nabers

Last year, it was considered a hot take to prefer Nabers over the consensus top receiver prospect, eventual Cardinals first-round WR Marvin Harrison Jr. That doesn’t look quite so spicy now after Nabers turned in an outstanding rookie season despite playing for a dysfunctional Giants offense. Nabers was targeted 170 times, second-most in the league, and parlayed that into 109 catches for 1,204 yards and seven touchdowns. Maybe not the most efficient output but considering Nabers was a rookie and considering the circumstances, it was a heck of an introduction. 

There are loads of other reasons the Giants are confident they have a star to build around. Nabers’ open score of 91 was tied for the best mark among all receivers. That category has been shown to have some predictiveness year over year, moreso than ESPN’s other receiver metrics like catch score, yards after catch score and total score, all of which Nabers was also well above average in. His overall score of 67 was sixth-best and his PFF receiving grade of 87.1 was ninth. 

Beyond the numbers, Nabers just looked like a star, with explosive speed and strong routes. There are some areas of his game to tighten up like drops and it would help if the Giants could build a healthy offensive environment around him. But Nabers looks well on his way to joining the rarefied air at the top of one of the deepest position groups in the NFL.