July is top 100 season in the NFL as everyone tries to kill the days until training camp and the start of the new season. Unfortunately, the official top 100 list from the league is not good. We’re not trying to hate; it’s just a well-accepted fact at this point in time. 

For five years, we’ve been trying to do better. The time has come for the 2026 version of our NFL Trade Rumors Top 100 Players. Instead of using player polls, we aim to better reflect reality with traditional and advanced statistical analysis, evaluations from league personnel, positional value, awards, career trajectory and, of course, the good old-fashioned gut check. Our hope is to give more credit to players who are overlooked, either because they don’t play a glamorous position or because they’re not household names (yet). 

We’ll have updates daily over the next couple of weeks, so keep checking back! 

Previous Entries:

• NFLTR Top 100: 100-91
• NFLTR Top 100: 90-81
• NFLTR Top 100: 80-71
• NFLTR Top 100: 70-61
• NFLTR Top 100: 60-51
• NFLTR Top 100: 50-41
• NFLTR Top 100: 40-31
• NFLTR Top 100: 30-21
• NFLTR Top 100: 20-11

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

10 – Titans DT Jeffery Simmons

Simmons has vaulted into the top defensive tackle spot on our list thanks to a dominant 2025 season. He was a force on the interior of the Titans’ defense, racking up 11 sacks, 17 tackles for loss, three forced fumbles, three batted passes and a safety for good measure. Double-digit sacks are extra impressive for defensive tackles, and Simmons gets even more degree of difficulty points for doing all of this for a morose Titans team that won three games, trailed most of the season and fired its coach before the halfway mark. 

Not only was Simmons a dynamic pass rusher — finishing second in ESPN’s pass rush win rate at 15 percent and recording 64 total pressures per PFF — he was outstanding against the run, too. His 42 stops tied for the fourth-best mark among 142 qualifying defensive tackles last year. What’s scary is that Simmons could be even better in 2026. He’s still in the prime of his career, turning 29 years old this month, and new HC Robert Saleh’s defense is great for defensive linemen who can attack and wreck blocks like Simmons. He might not top 80 percent of the snaps like he has each of the past six years, but it would not be surprising at all if Simmons had better numbers on fewer snaps thanks to being fresher. 

9 – Bengals WR Ja’Marr Chase

The NFL is absolutely loaded with great receivers. It was a chore to cut down the candidates for this top 100 list and another challenge to sort out the hierarchy of the ones who made it. With the top handful of wideouts on this list, it’s hard to go wrong. But if I could pick just one receiver to start a team with, Chase would be my pick. 

Outside of targets, Chase didn’t finish as the best in the NFL in any particular stat, not like in 2024 when he joined the exclusive club of NFL triple crown winners. He was extremely good across the board, though, in every facet of the position. He was No. 8 in ESPN’s overall score, which combines its open score, catch score and yards after catch score. Chase ranked 11th, 22nd and seventh, respectively, in those three categories. PFF gave Chase its best receiving grade of his career, cracking 90 overall. He also improved his contested catch rate to 54.5 percent, the best mark of his career, and forced the third-most missed tackles of any wideout at 23. 

Chase also just passes the eye test with flying colors. He is elite at every aspect of playing the position — route running, catching, dynamic ability after the catch — and deserves the top spot until someone knocks him off it. 

8 – Rams QB Matthew Stafford

Remember when Stafford and the Rams flirted with a trade to the Giants or Raiders? Or when he missed basically all of training camp with a back injury that required intervention from space-age medical technology? There are alternate timelines where the 2025 season is far less special for the Rams and Stafford, but luckily for them and fans of high-level football, we got the best-case scenario. At the helm of one of the best teams in football that came painfully short of a Super Bowl appearance, Stafford led the NFL in both passing yards (4,707) and touchdowns (46). It was a narrow vote ahead of Patriots QB Drake Maye, but Stafford was a deserving MVP winner for the first time in his career. 

At 38 years old, Stafford has some mobility limitations even if he was never much of a scrambler. But his arm is as golden as ever, and like many quarterbacks playing deep into their 30s, he has complete mental command of the game and what defenses are throwing at him. A live arm and razor-sharp mind are a lethal combination in the NFL, and Stafford fully weaponized them last season. He led the league with both 58 big-time throws, as charted by PFF, and a 7.7 percent big-time throw rate. Simultaneously, his interception rate of 1.3 percent was the lowest of his 17-year career. 

For 2026, Stafford is back with the Rams as they try to catch that same lightning in a bottle again and win another Super Bowl. The 38-year-old says he’s taking things year to year at this point in his career, but he also revealed he talked to Tom Brady and Drew Brees about how they stayed effective into their 40s. Between that and how well he played last year, he might have a lot of football still to play. 

7 – Texans DE Will Anderson Jr.

When we talk about breakout players, there’s a lot of attention paid to the guys who go from average to good. But the harder, rarer jump is to go from good to great. That’s what Anderson accomplished in 2025. The former No. 3 pick in the 2023 draft won Defensive Rookie of the Year and had 18 sacks over his first two seasons. We ranked him inside our top 50 last year, up about 20 spots from his rookie debut. 

Then he went nuclear this past season. Anderson led the entire NFL in total pressures last season, per PFF, with the service crediting him for 17 sacks (he had 12 officially, but PFF includes playoffs and doesn’t split out half sacks). PFF also gave him its highest pass rush productivity score, a formula that combines sacks, hits and hurries relative to how many rush opportunities a player gets, and the No. 1 win rate among all edge rushers at 25.3 percent. ESPN has a different methodology but still ranked Anderson No. 4 with a 23 percent pass rush win rate. 

Anderson checks every box a defensive coach could hope for. In addition to his dominance as a pass rusher, he was incredibly disruptive against the run. He notched 20 tackles for loss and ranked seventh with 37 stops, per PFF. Coaches rave about his work ethic, leadership and football character, and he has a knack for playing his best when his best is required. He forced three fumbles in two postseason games last season, and over the past two years he has seven sacks in Houston’s four playoff games. 

6 – Packers OLB Micah Parsons

Parsons was everything the Packers hoped for when they swung a blockbuster trade on the eve of the start of last season to pry him out of Dallas. He was one of the most dangerous and efficient edge rushers in football, a player opponents had to build their game plans around, only to see Parsons wreck them anyway more often than not. Parsons gave the Packers pass rush a huge jolt with 12.5 sacks and two forced fumbles. ESPN recorded him with a 23 percent pass rush win rate, third among all edge rushers, and PFF credited him with 79 total pressures in 14 games. 

Yet that last number reveals the risk Green Bay took on with the trade. Parsons tore his ACL late in the season. It was a big factor in the Packers’ four-game slump to end the season and their early playoff exit. It will also impact this season, as Parsons will probably start the season on the PUP list and be working his way back into form. And while ACL injuries aren’t the career-killer they used to be a few decades ago, any knee injury introduces some long-term uncertainty. 

5 – Bengals QB Joe Burrow

The injury bug bit Burrow and the Bengals once again in 2025, making it the third time in six seasons he’s missed major regular season time. Burrow does deserve a ton of credit for powering through the rehab for Grade 3 turf toe — an innocuous-sounding name for one of the most painful injuries a player can suffer, literally tearing the ligaments that attach the big toe to the foot. Instead of missing a minimum of 12 weeks, Burrow was back after 10. 

It was too late to save Cincinnati’s season, but Burrow did the best that he could with the limited time available to him. He had 17 touchdowns in a little less than half a season’s worth of work, and if you adjust the filter a tick to ensure he has enough snaps to qualify, his EPA per play was sixth-best out of 34 qualifying passers. Burrow was locked in — his big-time throw rate of 6.6 percent ranked fourth among all quarterbacks and his turnover-worthy play rate of 0.7 percent was first. 

Still, a three-year playoff drought is not up to the standard Burrow and others have for the Bengals. This is a big year for a lot of people in Cincinnati as they try and snap that streak. As long as Burrow stays healthy, you have to like their chances. 

4 – Ravens QB Lamar Jackson

It was a tough year for the elite quarterbacks in the AFC, and Jackson was one of several big names who got up in injuries and bigger teamwide issues. Coming off of what should arguably have been his third MVP season in 2024, Jackson was banged up early in 2025 and the injuries just kept mounting. By the end of the season, he had missed four games and played through others with hamstring, knee, toe and back issues. 

It’s no wonder he registered a dramatic career low in rushing attempts at just 67 when he’d been well over 100 in each of the seven years prior. There were other signs that Jackson wasn’t quite right. He had the worst sack rate of his career and his pressure-to-sack rate climbed to 23.1 percent — nearly double what it was in 2024 and just shy of his previous career-worst. He also had the worst big-time throw rate of his career at just 2.8 percent. 

Still, his overall numbers remained respectable. In 13 starts, he completed 63.6 percent of his passes for 2,549 yards, 21 touchdowns and seven interceptions. His 7.1 adjusted net yards per attempt ranked seventh in the league and Jackson put up 349 yards rushing and two scores on the ground — bad for him but career year-type numbers for many other quarterbacks. There are some questions about how his game will age as he approaches his 30s, but for now, health is Jackson’s biggest opponent. It’s not a coincidence that in his healthy seasons he’s been in the mix for MVP more often than not. 

3 – Chiefs QB Patrick Mahomes

There’s a lot of thought put into crafting this list each summer. But for the last three years, I haven’t had to think very hard about the No. 1 spot. It’s just been abundantly clear that Mahomes is the best player in the sport; the standard everyone else is chasing. The stats haven’t always been there like his 52-touchdown tour de force of a debut back in 2018, but Mahomes has willed his team to wins, lots and lots of wins. Entering 2025, Kansas City had been to seven straight AFC title games and five Super Bowls with three Lombardi trophies to show for it. 

But all the loose ends Mahomes was holding together finally came unglued last season. The Chiefs were 6-7 and fighting for their playoff lives entering a Week 15 matchup against the Chargers when Mahomes, scrambling for his life trying to put his team ahead like he had all season, landed wrong and tore his ACL. Kansas City lost that game plus the next three to finish 6-11, with big questions to answer for next season. 

Although Mahomes is a notoriously fast healer and on track to play Week 1 despite the late-season injury, there are too many questions about him and the Chiefs for him to hold the No. 1 slot this year. Mobility has always been a big part of Mahomes’ game, especially last year when he had a career-high 422 rushing yards because so often the best play for the team was Mahomes doing it himself. Even if he plays Week 1, it will probably take time for him to be full strength. 

The Chiefs signed RB Kenneth Walker to try and take pressure off of Mahomes and brought back former OC Eric Bieniemy to try and reclaim their edge from former seasons. Apart from those two moves, though, the offensive infrastructure looks a lot like the past three years that have been stale and lifeless. Mahomes and HC Andy Reid have earned some benefit of the doubt, but whether or not they can get the dynasty back on track is going to be one of the biggest stories of this upcoming season. 

2 – Rams DE Myles Garrett

Resetting the NFL sack record is an impressive enough accomplishment to speak for itself. With 23 sacks, Garrett edged past the 22.5 mark set by Michael Strahan in 2001 and equaled by T.J. Watt in 2021. He was named the Defensive Player of the Year for the second time in his career, cementing a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame one day — if he hadn’t already. 

Yet Garrett achieved this remarkable feat through some strong headwinds. The Browns won just five games all season, meaning Garrett had fewer true pass rush opportunities than some of his peers. As he got closer and closer to the record, there was a ton of attention paid to trying to stop him — even more than the usual battery of chips, double teams and quick throws. A 13-6 Week 17 win over the Steelers epitomized that, with Steelers QB Aaron Rodgers notching the shortest time to throw of any Browns opponent last season. 

Garrett was just a force of nature who could not be denied last year; a unique athlete with size, strength, speed and agility. If aliens invaded the planet and gave us one player with one rep to sack their quarterback, Garrett would be the runaway choice to save humanity. It’s tantalizing to think about what he can do on a Super Bowl favorite like the Rams…

1 – Bills QB Josh Allen

Taking over the No. 1 spot on our list for the first time in his career after hovering in the top three for the previous four years, Allen survived the attrition that cut down so many of the AFC’s other top quarterbacks. He was his usual dynamic dual-threat self, throwing for 25 touchdowns and rushing for 14 more. Allen was behind only Rams QB Matthew Stafford in total touchdowns in 2025. 

Allen’s passing touchdowns have dipped a little bit over the past two seasons as the Bills have relied more on a balanced approach and a run game helmed by RB James Cook so that Allen doesn’t feel like everything is on his shoulders all the time. He’s responded by cutting down on a lot of the mistakes in his game that came from him pressing too hard. He set a new career-best with a 2.4 percent turnover-worthy play rate, down from 2.6 percent the year before. Allen hasn’t sacrificed too much aggressiveness to get there, either, ranking No. 9 in the NFL in big-time throw rate. 

And of course, Allen remains an incredible weapon on the ground, especially in the red zone with his rare combination of size, strength and speed. Allen is bigger than most of the players trying to tackle him every week and it shows. Even if his passing touchdowns are down, he’s scoring more on the ground to make up for it. 

Unfortunately, Allen was undone in the playoffs once again, missing a golden opportunity to break the Bills’ Super Bowl drought in a year in which Mahomes, Burrow and Jackson all missed the playoffs. He fell on the road in the divisional round in a wild back-and-forth game against Bo Nix and the Broncos, one where Nix made just a couple more plays and, crucially, fewer mistakes. Allen might be one of the most impressive quarterbacks to ever play in terms of raw talent, but just ask Dan Marino and John Elway — it takes more than that. Hopefully for Allen and the city of Buffalo, this story ends more like Elway’s than Marino’s.