NFL Trade Rumors Top 100 Players: 100-91

By
Logan Ulrich
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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 sucks. We’re not hating or going out of our way to tear down another outlet; 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! 

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100 – Saints OLB Chase Young

It’s been a rollercoaster career for Young, the former No. 2 overall pick and 2020 Defensive Rookie of the Year. He had just 1.5 sacks in the next two years after that peak, held back by injuries and (by his own admission) taking his early success for granted. He was traded in Year 4 and in Year 5 he was on his third different team. But he earned a long-term deal with the Saints and Young’s trajectory is climbing yet again. He finished last year with 10 sacks, the first double-digit sack season of his career. 

Even more impressively, Young hit that mark in just 12 games. A calf injury sidelined him for the first five weeks of the season, and when he returned he went on a tear. ESPN ranked him seventh among all edge rushers with a 19 percent pass rush win rate. His 49 total pressures were 32nd out of 123 qualifiers in PFF’s database, but he racked those up in fewer than 300 pass-rushing reps. The average of everyone ranked above him was 471 pass rush attempts. Staying healthy and playing more is the next step for Young to take, but if he can do that, he’s poised to rocket up this list. 

99 – Seahawks S Nick Emmanwori

There’s a high bar for safeties to make this list, and there’s probably an even higher bar for rookies. But Emmanwori had such a cool rookie season that I felt like he had to be an inclusion. He had a huge impact for the Super Bowl champion Seahawks. There are the on-paper stats which were great — 2.5 sacks, nine tackles for loss, 11 pass breakups and an interception. You could go a little deeper even and cite his league-leading 20 total pressures among safeties, or his 37 stops which ranked third at the position. 

Emmanwori’s real impact is harder to capture on paper, though. The Seahawks kept him on the field as much as possible, whether it was as a third safety, a slot defender or even dime linebacker. He was in the box or on the line of scrimmage for 921 of his 944 snaps. Emmanwori’s athleticism and physicality helped the Seahawks match up against whatever look opponents threw at them, whether they tried to spread the field or loaded up to run the football. It worked especially well against the Rams who caught a lot of teams off-guard with their three tight end packages. Just not Seattle.

98 – Eagles LB Zack Baun

Baun followed up his breakout, All-Pro 2024 season with a performance that showed he wasn’t a one-hit wonder. The veteran linebacker notched 3.5 sacks for the second straight year and was an effective blitzer. He wasn’t quite as prolific with the forced fumbles or stops (tackles that constitute a failure for the offense), dropping from six to one and 79 to 43, respectively. However, he was noticeably better and more productive in coverage. Baun cut his receptions allowed from 68 to 40. His completion rate allowed of 65.6 was third-best among all linebackers and only four players were stingier in terms of yards per catch. 

97 – Jets WR Garrett Wilson

It was a year to forget for the Jets and Wilson. Fresh off a brand-new contract extension to keep him in New York for the foreseeable future, Wilson was limited to seven games due to injury and had only 36 catches for 395 yards and four touchdowns. He still finished as New York’s leading receiver on the season, which tells you just how miserable the Jets’ passing attack was. 

But there were still reminders that if the Jets can ever figure out their quarterback situation, Wilson has the talent to absolutely explode. His Open Score (ESPN’s WR metrics) of 82 was tied for fourth-best out of 110 wideouts. He was a terror against man coverage with 2.49 yards per route run, 15th out of 107 qualifying receivers in PFF’s database. The league is loaded with quality wideouts, many of whom had production that dwarfed Wilson last year. His raw talent still puts him in the conversation for the upper crust, though. 

96 – Bengals DT Dexter Lawrence

It was a shockingly unproductive season for Lawrence, one that proved to be his final season in New York after the Bengals landed him in a big-time trade swap. For whatever reason, he had a tough time getting on the stat sheet, notching career lows almost across the board. He had a measly half sack on the season and just 14 solo tackles. 

Cincinnati thinks this past year will be an aberration, though. Lawrence battled an elbow injury all year, one he admitted afterward did have an impact. He still finished 19th in ESPN’s pass rush win rate and was one of just two players at the top of the leaderboard to be doubled on over 70 percent of their snaps. PFF charted him with 34 total pressures — just two fewer than 2024 when he had nine sacks — and had him seventh in win rate out of 121 qualifying DTs. Lawrence’s pressure numbers were double that at his peak, which is just ludicrous for a nose tackle, but it is a promising sign that he hasn’t fallen off a cliff. 

95 – Panthers OLB Jaelan Phillips

Sacks are more valuable than pressures, and by a decent bit. If an offense takes a sack, they go on to earn a first down only about 20 percent of the time and the odds are even worse that the drive results in points. But sacks are not the best predictor of future sacks; total disruption is. Logically, it makes sense that the players who are getting to the quarterback more consistently will have more production in the long run, as sacks can be fluky and are a smaller sample size of plays. 

Keep this context in mind for Phillips. He was officially credited with only five sacks last year. However, PFF charted him with 76 total pressures, ninth in the league. Of the five players who finished in the same range, Phillips had by far the lowest sack total: 

Player Pressures Sacks
Micah Parsons 79 14
Jaelan Phillips 76 5
Tuli Tuipulotu 75 14
Byron Young 74 13
K’Lavon Chaisson 74 12

 

In comparison, the last time Phillips had this many pressures in 2022 (also the last time he played a full season), he was credited with 10 sacks by PFF, which doesn’t split out half sacks. Assuming he can stay healthy, that feels like more of a true representation of his potential, and why the Panthers were willing to make such a huge financial gamble in free agency. 

94 – Ravens RB Derrick Henry

Running backs who are just two-down bangers are not valued highly in the modern NFL. Henry isn’t a big threat as a pass catcher or blocker. But even if he’s a one-trick stallion, that one trick he does is so good that he’s almost assured of a spot in the Pro Football Hall of Fame one day. At an age when many running backs are barely hanging on to a roster spot, Henry continued to do his best impression of a runaway freight train. He was near the top of the league in breakaway runs and piled up nearly 1,600 yards rushing and 16 touchdowns in his age-31 season in 2025. 

That pushed him up into the top 10 for all-time rushing yards, and he eclipsed Adrian Peterson and Walter Payton to reach fourth place all-time in rushing touchdowns, only one behind Marcus Allen for third place. Another 1,000-yard rushing season would put Henry right on the cusp of the top-five. 

93 – Buccaneers S Antoine Winfield Jr.

Winfield was named to the Pro Bowl for just the second time in his career, making up a bit for a snub in 2023 which was a much better single-season effort. Still, Winfield was effective. He was the second-best safety in football last year in missed tackle rate (per PFF) at a rock-solid 4.2 percent. He also ranked fourth with 15 total pressures as the Buccaneers moved him all over the field. Throw in eight pass breakups, two picks and a forced fumble, and Winfield was a quality triple threat as a safety. 

92 – Raiders LT Kolton Miller

Perhaps the biggest praise that can be written about Miller is to talk about how badly the Raiders missed him when he was injured. The Raiders were the league’s last-ranked offense in 2025, and by a healthy margin, too, in points and yards. They had a game with just three first downs and 30 plays and another game with just seven first downs. They scored 10 points or fewer in seven of 17 games. There were multiple issues, but awful offensive line play was at the heart of it. First-round RB Ashton Jeanty averaged 1.26 yards before contact per carry, 734th out of 737 runners since 2010, and veteran QB Geno Smith regressed while taking a career-high 55 sacks.  

Miller wouldn’t have been a cure-all but he would have helped considerably. In the four games Miller did play, he was terrific, notching a 98.8 efficiency in pass protection with zero sacks allowed. He was a positive as a run blocker, too. He figures to be a big part of a hopeful rebound for the Raiders this year. 

91 – Rams OLB Byron Young

A Day 1 starter from the 2023 draft class that catapulted the Rams back into the thick of contention in the NFC, Young took his game from good to really really good in 2025. He raised his level in every phase of the game, racking up a career-best 12 sacks and 74 total pressures. He ranked 11th in PFF’s database and his 33 combined sacks and hits were behind only Jared Verse, Aidan Hutchinson and new QB tag-team partner Myles Garrett. 

Young excelled against the run, too. ESPN charted him with a run stop win rate of 32 percent, third-best among all edge rushers. PFF credited him with 52 stops, the best mark of any edge rusher in football last year. With one more year left on his rookie contract, he’s building an impressive resume that will make him a very rich man by this time next year.

 

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