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

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

70 – Giants WR Malik Nabers

Injuries suck. In the fourth game of the 2017 season, the Giants lost superstar WR Odell Beckham Jr. to a season-ending injury and his career would never be the same after that. In the fourth game of the 2025 season, another young budding star Giants receiver in Nabers crumpled to the turf with a major injury. 

Hopefully this time the outcome is different. Nabers’ rookie season wasn’t quite as good as Beckham’s, but it speaks volumes that he did enough to put himself in the conversation with 109 catches, 1,204 yards and seven scores. In Year 2, he was off to a tremendous start with 18 catches, 271 yards and two scores in three-and-a-half games. It’s tough to prorate that small of a sample size over a full season but Nabers’ ESPN open score of 74, 10th among all wideouts, offers a little glimpse of the sky-high potential that’s still there — as long as Nabers can make it back. Months after his injury, it still seems like there’s a ways for him to go in his rehab, and it’s possible we don’t see peak Nabers again for a while. 

69 – Bears G Joe Thuney

Thuney was exactly what the Bears were hoping for when they traded for him last year, prying him away from the Chiefs who had to make some hard business decisions. In his age-33 season, Thuney was named a first-team AP All-Pro for the third straight season. He started all 17 games, plus the playoffs, and was one of just two interior offensive linemen to rank inside the top 10 in both pass block and run block win rate (he finished top three in both for good measure). 

Pass blocking is where Thuney really shines. He had PFF’s best pass block grade among guards last year, including a 98.5 efficiency rating in pass protection and no sacks allowed. He did that on the third-most reps of any guard (788), too, with 47 of those reps coming at left tackle. Thuney’s ability to kick to the blindside in a pinch is a perfect illustration of his strengths and value as a player. 

68 – Broncos DL Zach Allen

2025 was the second straight monster year for Allen as a pass rusher. After scoring 8.5 sacks in 2024, he finished with seven this past year, a great mark for an interior rusher. ESPN charted him with a 10 percent pass rush win rate, good for 13th best at his position. Allen also cracked 80 total pressures for the second consecutive season, leading all defensive tackles per PFF. The only other two interior DL to accomplish that milestone since 2020 have been Chris Jones and Aaron Donald. 

These aren’t just cheap pressures, either. Allen had more QB hits (38) than pressures (33), and he led all defenders by a mile in that category. Between hits and sacks, no one touched the opposing quarterback more last year, not even Myles Garrett. 

67 – Broncos G Quinn Meinerz

Meinerz has been making a run at the top spot in the NFL’s interior linemen hierarchy the past two seasons with a big step forward in his game. He earned his first Pro Bowl berth in 2025 and was named first-team AP All-Pro for the second straight season. He did his best work in the run game, finishing No. 7 in ESPN’s run block win rate for guards at 76 percent and No. 2 in PFF’s run blocking grade at 91.0. 

Pass blocking was a little bit more of an adventure. After a stellar 2024 season in this department with just 12 pressures allowed and a 99 percent efficiency rating, Meinerz dipped all the way down to 31 pressures surrendered and a 97.5 pass protection efficiency. True pass sets were the culprit. Defined by PFF as pass plays that exclude play action, screens, short dropbacks, time to throw under two seconds and snaps with less than four rushers, these reps have a much higher degree of difficulty for blockers and Meinerz had the fifth-most of any guard last year (332, up from 297 the year before). Twenty-six of Meinerz’s allowed pressures came on true pass sets. Still, his overall pass protection efficiency was 15th of 83 guards last year, so he was still highly effective. 

66 – Rams DT Kobie Turner

Turner began his career as a snub from the NFL Scouting Combine, and in many ways it feels like he’s still flying far under the radar. He had seven sacks last year to push his career total to 24 in three years — the second-best mark of any defensive tackle in that same timespan. Yet he was shut out from Pro Bowl or All-Pro honors, even with the Rams’ overall team success. 

It’s baffling because statistically Turner stacks up well with the top dogs at his position. Last year, his 69 total pressures ranked second among all defensive tackles and he had an outstanding pass rush win rate of 14 percent that was fifth. He wasn’t a one-trick pony, either, ranking 16th out of 142 qualifying players with 31 stops. There’s a lot of buzz about the Rams possibly pairing Donald and Garrett, two all-time legends, on the same defensive line this year. But Turner has stepped in since Donald retired two years ago and the Rams’ defense has hardly missed a beat. He’s a formidable player in his own right. 

65 – Giants OLB Brian Burns

Known as a solid pass rusher for several years, Burns seemed to ascend to a different tier in his seventh season in 2025, racking up a gaudy 16.5 sacks. In a normal year, that might have led the league, but Burns happened to finish second to an all-time season from Garrett in Cleveland to break the sacks record. 

He also caught some good breaks, because his pressure numbers were drastically lower than his high sack total would suggest. Burns notched 53 total pressures for PFF, good for 25th out of 130 qualifying edge rushers. Good but not necessarily elite and right in line with his career average so far. For comparison’s sake, Jared Verse had almost double the pressures but half the sacks. NFL analyst Brandon Thorn, who specializes in line of scrimmage play, charts the quality of all sacks in the league to create a sack score. He rated just one of Burns’ 17 sacks as a “high quality” rep. 

That said, Burns’ pass rush win rate of 16 percent ranked 11th on ESPN’s leaderboard for edge rushers, and the veteran found more ways to contribute than ever before. He forced three fumbles, batted down seven passes and had 42 stops for the second straight season, ranking fourth among all edge rushers per PFF. For a player criticized as just a speed rusher, Burns has proven he has a lot more dimension and ceiling to his game. 

64 – Colts G Quenton Nelson

The honor of highest-ranked guard on our Top 100 list goes to Nelson, thanks to a combination of a slight step back for other linemen and a resurgence for Nelson in his eighth season. After a two-year break where Nelson “only” made the Pro Bowl (something he’s done in all of his eight seasons, he has been back as an All-Pro selection each of the past two seasons. In total, he has six All-Pro nods for his career, three first-team and three second-team. 

Nelson’s 84.5 run blocking grade from PFF was the fourth-best mark of any guard last year and the third best of his career. In pass protection, his 98.7 efficiency rating was the second-best mark at his position, and he had over 400 more pass blocking snaps than No. 1, Cowboys G T.J. Bass. ESPN also had a good mark for Nelson in pass protection, charting him with a 95 percent pass block win rate that was No. 7 among all guards. Overall, Nelson had the best all-around performance of any guard in the NFL this past year. 

63 – Raiders C Tyler Linderbaum

The Raiders almost certainly overpaid for Linderbaum by giving him $27 million a year (150 percent over the previous high-water mark for centers) on a deal that for practical purposes is essentially fully guaranteed. However, they did get a super solid player to help fix their biggest weakness last season. Linderbaum went two years without allowing a sack before getting got twice in 2025. He still ranked fourth in ESPN’s pass block win rate among all interior offensive linemen. He was fourth in PFF’s run blocking grade, too, and the wide zone scheme in Las Vegas under HC Klint Kubiak should be an even better fit for his skillset. 

62 – Ravens WR Zay Flowers

Flowers has been essentially locked in as a starter for the Ravens since being picked in the first round in 2023, missing just one game in that time span due to injury. He reached 1,000 yards in his second year and made another production leap in Year 3, tallying 86 catches, 1,211 yards and five touchdowns, plus another score on the ground for good measure. He may not look like the prototypical No. 1 receiver at just 5-9 and 183 pounds, but he’s clearly the No. 1 for the Ravens and demonstrated last year he can be extremely productive. 

There’s still a question about what Flowers’ true ceiling is, as his size limits him in certain scenarios. Five touchdowns was both a career high for Flowers and a tick low for a primary receiver. Baltimore and Flowers will be debating this question at the negotiating table this offseason, as Flowers is eligible for a new deal for the first time and the receiver market has soared. His camp has a host of stats it can point to beyond the raw numbers, though. Flowers had the seventh-best open score of any receiver last year in ESPN’s receiver analytics, which uses tracking data to measure separation even on plays a receiver isn’t targeted. His overall score, which weighs performance at the catch point and yards after catch, was fifth-best, and his 2.91 yards per route run against man coverage ranked sixth among all wideouts. 

61 – Saints WR Chris Olave

Olave entered the 2025 season with questions about his career longevity after some battles with concussions the year before. He exited as the unquestioned primary option in the Saints’ passing attack and a big breakout player. Olave set new career bests in every major category from targets (156) to catches (100) to yards (1,163) to touchdowns (nine). Those catch and touchdown marks are especially notable because there were doubts about whether Olave could hold up as a high-volume, primary option. 

ESPN’s receiver metrics paint the same picture. Yards after catch has never been Olave’s forte and he got a below-average mark in that category. But his open score of 81 was No. 6 out of 110 qualifying wideouts, showcasing just how great of a route runner and separator Olave is. Contested catches have been another criticism but Olave has now finished with an above-average catch score in three of his four seasons. With a locked-in starting quarterback and more help around him, it feels like there could still be meat on the bone for Olave to unlock as long as his health continues to hold up.