The NFL’s 101 best players for the 2025 season: 90-81

Everybody in this business has their own favorite and best players, and their own methodologies for their rankings. The NFL Network does the annual Top 100 players based on ratings from other players, which is an interesting way to go, if not fully and ideally comprehensive — most players are focused on their upcoming opponents, as opposed to the entire NFL on an agnostic basis.

Others will do their rankings based on their conversations with NFL coaches and executives, which is also interesting in its own way, and we’ll get into some of the more… um… “creative” takes from some of those folks as we tread up these particular rankings.

My method isn’t really “better” than anybody else’s, and hopefully not too much worse. I do my annual Top 101 player lists (which I’ve been doing for years, at times with current SB Nation colleague Mark Schofield) based on tape study and advanced metrics. And in this case, shifting my focus from the 2024 season to what things might look like in 2025.

As far as positional value, I find that the trend on most lists is to overcook quarterback importance at the expense of crucial players elsewhere — especially those who have become key to the modern NFL, such as slot receivers, multi-position defenders, offensive guards, and interior defensive linemen. Ideally, such a list presents a more balanced view of what matters in today’s game.

With all that preamble out of the way, here are my 101 best players in the NFL today. We began with Nos. 101-91, which you can read right here, and these will roll out in 10 separate installments before the regular season begins.

(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus and Sports Info Solutions).

90. Joe Thuney, OG, Chicago Bears

From 2018-2024 with the New England Patriots and Kansas City Chiefs, Joe Thuney allowed a grand total of nine sacks… in 5,401 pass-protecting snaps. Most people didn’t know who he was, though, until he had to kick outside from left guard to left tackle late last season for the Chiefs as their outside protection situation continued to disappoint. From Week 15 through Super Bowl LIX, Thuney allowed two sacks and 24 total pressures at a position he’d barely played before, against some of the NFL’s best edge-rushers.

If those relative “failures” are your abiding memories of Thuney’s career, think again. When playing left guard last season, Thuney didn’t allow a single sack, and gave up just 13 pressures. The Chicago Bears gave Thuney a two-year, $35.5 million contract extension this offseason after acquiring him in a trade that was more of a salary cap dump for the Chiefs, and based on Thuney’s 2024 left guard tape, he still has everything required to help Chicago’s radically revamped interior offensive line become a highly successful part of new head coach Ben Johnson’s directive to make Caleb Williams the team’s first real franchise quarterback since World War II.

At 6’5 and 304 pounds soaking wet, Thuney has never been a top-tier athlete or athletic mauler; he’s instead managed to mine the ore of his potential with peerless technique and a real head for the game. The Bears will be the third NFL team to benefit from Thuney’s attention to detail.

89. Sam LaPorta, TE, Detroit Lions

In the 2024 NFL season, no tight end did more to annoy opposing defenses on deep passes than Sam LaPorta. In his second season since the Detroit Lions selected him in the second round of the 2023 draft out of Iowa, LaPorta led all players at his position with seven catches on targets of 20 or more air yards, with 186 yards and two touchdowns in the bargain.

Like most tight ends, LaPorta got most of his work done last season on passes of 0-9 air yards – 37 catches on 46 targets for 317 yards and two touchdowns – but it was his ability to separate on deep passes that set him apart in Ben Johnson’s Lions offense. Jared Goff was not a major purveyor of the deep pass last season, completing 20 passes of 20 or more air yards on 48 targets for 698 yards, seven touchdowns, five interceptions, and a passer rating of 88.9, which really illustrates how important LaPorta’s vertical catches were. LaPorta is also an outstanding blocker in any run scheme – there’s no way you play for Dan Campbell without that – and that makes him an every-down valuable player when you add it to all the splash plays.

88. Byron Murphy, CB, Minnesota Vikings

The Arizona Cardinals selected Murphy out of the University of Washington in the second round of the 2019 draft, and for the most part during his time in the Valley of the Sun, Murphy was primarily a slot defender. That started to change in 2023, when he signed a three-year, $17 million deal with $8.1 million guaranteed to play for Brian Flores in the Vikings’ defense. Murphy has become a true outside corner, and a damned good one in Flores’ crazy-quilt set of schemes.

In 2024, Murphy allowed 77 catches on 110 targets for 779 yards, 305 yards after the catch, four touchdowns, six interceptions, five pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 79.3. Though he spent 60% of his snaps as an outside cornerback in 2024, Murphy got his picks and breakups from every alignment – outside, the slot, and the box, as chaos ensued all around him by Flores’ design.

That got Murphy a new three-year, $54 million deal with $34.78 million guaranteed, making him one of the NFL’s highest-paid cornerbacks, and justifiably so. Whether in the slot or outside, playing press or off coverage, Murphy has become the kind of cornerback you can trust in any situation.

87. Mike Evans, WR, Tampa Bay Buccaneers

Mike Evans has become one of those players whose consistency from year to year over time has him in the eventual discussion for the Pro Football Hall of Fame. With his 1,004 regular-season yards and 11 touchdowns on 74 catches and 110 targets in 2024, Evans became the second player in NFL history to record over 1,000 receiving yards in each of his first 11 seasons.

The other player is Jerry Rice, which is pretty decent company.

The eventual Hall of Fame talk isn’t just about that, though – coming into his 12th season, Evans ranks 35th all-time in career receptions with 836, 24th in receiving yards with 12,684, and ninth in receiving touchdowns with 105. Receivers always have a backlog to get in the Hall, but Evans will have a credible case five years after he hangs ‘em up.

Of course, Evans is more than just your garden-variety stat-collector. At age 31, and despite missing three games in the middle of the season due to injury, the 6’5, 231-pound Evans caught seven passes of 20 or more air yards on 15 targets for 220 yards and four touchdowns. Bucs quarterback Baker Mayfield has said this offseason that he wants the downfield pass to be more of a factor in 2025 and beyond, and with Evans’ downfield speed and ability to Godzilla opposing defenders with his size and physicality, that could be a serious thing for a team hoping to find a way to its third Super Bowl win. As is always the case, Evans will lead Tampa Bay’s receivers wherever they go.

86. Jonathan Greenard, EDGE, Minnesota Vikings

Last season, only the Philadelphia Eagles ranked higher in Defensive DVOA than did the Minnesota Vikings, and only Jared Verse of the Los Angeles Rams had more total pressures of opposing quarterbacks (89) than did Minnesota edge-rusher Jonathan Greenard with his 84. Greenard created that impressive total with 11 sacks, 11 quarterback hits, and 62 quarterback hurries. Greenard also got eight of those sacks and 60 of those pressures in True Pass Sets, which eliminate plays with three or fewer rushers, play-action, screens, short dropbacks, and throws released in less than 2 seconds from the evaluation.

A pretty good performance for the man who signed a four-year, $76 million contract with $38 million guaranteed with the Vikings, who basically traded Danielle Hunter to the Houston Texans in a free-agency contractual exchange of premium quarterback disruptors. It worked out well for both parties, as Hunter tallied 12 sacks and 74 total pressures in his first Texans season, but one could say that the Vikings are pretty happy with their side of that deal.

In his fifth NFL season, the 2020 third-round pick out of Florida displayed a technical palette as full as anybody’s in the NFL. Greenard can get to the quarterback in a multitude of ways – with handwork, spin moves, dip-and-rip around the edge, inside counters, and pure power to displace. And in Brian Flores’ defense, Greenard can show all that stuff in fronts that as as schematically destructive as you’ll see.

85. Bo Nix, QB, Denver Broncos

Bo Nix had a few myths to bust in his transition from college to the NFL. Because he had five different offensive coordinators in five seasons at Auburn and then Oregon, there wasn’t really a schematic place to hang his hat, and that was seen as a problem by some. Also, because he played at Oregon his last two collegiate seasons, there was the impression that he benefited from a hinky-dinky spread offense with little transference to the NFL. Nix was debited as a pocket passer with limited mobility, and with less than an excellent deep arm, as if he was the second coming of Mac Jones.

Along with Greg Cosell of NFL Films and ESPN’s NFL Matchup, I was fortunate to watch tape with Nix before he was drafted, and he was able to bust all those myths in my mind. He had run a complete NFL passing game with the Ducks in which he called all the protections and made full-field reads. A coach’s son who wants to be a coach himself after his NFL career is over, Nix showed as much intelligence for the game as any draft prospect I’ve ever spent time with. And the plays we discussed proved that he had more mobility, and a better ability to throw deep, than people thought.

Sean Payton was someone else who didn’t buy the tropes. The Broncos selected Nix with the 12th overall pick in the 2024 draft, and though Jayden Daniels deserved every bit of praise as the best rookie quarterback of that class, Nix wasn’t far behind. He completed 389 of 589 passes for 3,919 yards, 30 touchdowns, 12 interceptions, and a passer rating of 93.3. In the second half of his rookie season, once he’d worked the bugs out, Nix completed 170 of 243 passes for 1,807 yards, 19 touchdowns, six interceptions, and a passer rating of 107.1 — which was sixth-best in the NFL.

Oh, Nix also led the league in the regular season with 116 dropbacks outside the pocket, completing 63 of 107 passes for 785 yards, eight touchdowns, three interceptions, and a passer rating of 95.0. So much for the “he’s just a pocket passer” stuff. And he completed 32 passes of 20 or more air yards (fourth-best in the NFL) on 77 attempts for 975 yards, nine touchdowns, four interceptions, and a passer rating of 106.1, fifth-best in the league.

Basically, Bo Nix took about half a season to completely grasp one of the NFL’s most complex offenses, run by one of the NFL’s most demanding taskmasters in Payton, and he owned the position of Broncos Franchise Quarterback – something that hadn’t existed since Peyton Manning’s retirement a decade before.

84. Jeffery Simmons, DI, Tennessee Titans

Some great players on really bad teams will let that dichotomy wear them down after a while. It is difficult to deal with the fact that you’re losing all the time as a team, even (perhaps especially) when you’re winning as a player, and no matter how great you may be, people tend to take you less seriously when you’re on the wrong end of the win/loss column more often than not.

To his credit, Jeffery Simmons of the Tennessee Titans has not let that affect him at all over the last three seasons in which his team has totaled a 16-35 record (only the Chicago Bears and Carolina Panthers were worse in that time). While the TItans have been unserious for far too long, Simmons has been anything but. In 2024, Simmons made the third Pro Bowl of his career with a season in which he had five sacks, 49 total pressures, 50 solo tackles, 41 stops, four pass breakups, 11 tackles for loss, and two forced fumbles. And the 6’4, 305-pound Simmons got it done from everywhere on the defensive line – 28% of his snaps on the edge, 70% as a defensive tackle, and 2% as a nose tackle.

Simmons has the strength of a man 20 pounds heavier than he is, and the quickness off the ball of a man at least 20 pounds lighter, Add in all his technical savvy and competitive fire, and Simmons belongs on this list as one of the most consistent hellfire disruptors in the NFL – no matter how bad his team may be.

83. Quinyon Mitchell, CB, Philadelphia Eagles

When I was analyzing the cornerbacks in the 2024 draft, as much as I liked the other entrants, it was pretty easy for me to rate Toledo’s Quinyon Mitchell as my favorite. I loved Mitchell’s combination of size (6’ 0 1/8, 195 pounds), movement skills, multiple coverage concepts, and aggressiveness to the ball. Mitchell barely played any press coverage in college, but he checked that box at the Senior Bowl, and the Philadelphia Eagles selected him with the 22nd overall pick in the first round, and as the first cornerback taken.

It didn’t take Mitchell long to become a force multiplier in Vic Fangio’s defense. In his rookie season, Mitchell allowed 50 catches on 88 targets for 529 yards, 89 yards after the catch, four touchdowns, two interceptions, 10 pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 80.2.

Mitchell occasionally got lost a step late in coverage, which is not unusual among bigger, more aggressive cornerbacks finding their way at the highest level. But when Mitchell was on, he was very much on, and he turned into a carnivore when it was time to attack opposing receivers to break up potential plays. As Mitchell continues to match his acumen to his athleticism, those pass breakups will turn into more picks, and Mitchell will be even more of a pain for enemy receivers to deal with.

82. James Cook, RB, Buffalo Bills

In most ways, James Cook’s 2023 and 2024 seasons weren’t all that different. 273 carries in 2023, 260 in 2024. 1,262 rushing yards in 2023, 1,281 in 2024. 52 receptions in 2023, 38 in 2024.

The difference (and it was a BIG difference) last season was that after scoring just two rushing touchdowns in 2023, his second NFL season after the Buffalo Bills selected him with the 63rd overall pick in the second round of the 2022 draft out of Georgia, Cook tied for the NFL lead (with Derrick Henry and Jalen Hurts) with 19 rushing touchdowns last season.

It was not what anybody would have expected from a 5’11, 190-pound back, and there was absolutely no precedent for it in Cook’s career – he scored just 14 rushing touchdowns over four seasons with Georgia.

There were other aspects to Cook’s game in 2024, to be sure. Always a great receiver out of the backfield, he added 38 catches for 322 yards and two more touchdowns, and as a pure runner, he forced 47 missed tackles last season, had 14 runs of 15 or more yards, and proved equally adept at zone and gap runs, with a surprising toughness and burst inside the tackles.

Cook may not look like a traditional every-down back, but the tape and the metrics tell the tale: Cook was as important to his team as any back in the league last season in his own way. The Bills responded to this truth by giving Cook a new four-year, $48 million contract with $30 million guaranteed, to make sure he continues on that path.

81. Amon-Ra St. Brown, WR, Detroit Lions

Just as the concept of an outside cornerback or a pure free safety has been blown apart in the modern NFL by the need for greater positional versatility, the once-defined line between outside and slot receivers is not so defined anymore. Last season, the Los Angeles Rams and the San Francisco 49ers tied for the league lead with 60% of their offensive snaps in condensed formations, and nine teams aligned all their offensive players within the numbers on at least 40% of their snaps.

With condensed formations, and receivers much closer together pre-snap, it’s tough to tell who the outside guy and the slot guy is more often than not, and that makes coverage more difficult.

Cooper Kupp explained this very well in his first press conference with the Seattle Seahawks.

“In eight years with the Rams, I think it’s tagged with the slot, but I don’t know how you determine that when we’re in condensed formations,” Kupp said. “I’m outside, but I’m running a slot route. A lot of times I was outside, and I’m not sure if it was being tagged as a slot route or not. But the ability to move in an offense is being able to ‘formation’ guys to be anywhere. You’ve got to learn the whole thing because you could be in any one of these spots at any time.”

Few receivers exploit these particular nuances better than Amon-Ra St. Brown of the Detroit Lions. In his fourth NFL season, the 2021 fourth-round pick out of USC caught 123 passes on 148 targets for 1,400 yards, and 12 touchdowns. He lined up 52.6% of the time in the slot last season, but eight of his 16 explosive receptions came when he was an outside receiver, and when you watch what St. Brown does to defenses, especially in those condensed formations (which the Lions used 48% of the time, the NFL’s third-highest rate), he’s able to blur those lines to his own benefit as well as anybody.

Since 2022 overall, only Travis Kelce (377) has more catches than St. Brown’s 370. St. Brown ranks fourth in receiving yards with 4,521, and fourth in touchdowns with 29. Whether you see St. Brown as a No. 1 receiver in the traditional sense or not, he’s absolutely become one in the NFL’s new wave.