Tyreek Hill sat down again with the NFL Films crew under the impression he’d be asked about a few of his Miami Dolphins teammates.
Instead, running back Raheem Mostert crashed the scene with the 2024 edition of the “NFL Top 100” trophy, igniting one of the most memorable, and controversial, moments of the ranking show’s existence.
“I’ve been wanting this s— for so long!” Hill yelled, after lifting the 195-pound Mostert in celebration. “What’d I say in my rookie year, huh?”
To be precise, not only did Hill predict, following his 2016 debut with the Kansas City Chiefs, that he’d be the best player in the NFL, but also he threatened to dethrone perhaps the greatest quarterback of all time.
“I belong No. 1 over Tom Brady,” Hill said then. “Tom Brady, I’m calling you out.”
.@cheetah really spoke it into existence 1️⃣🔮 #NFLTop100 pic.twitter.com/4hUX9F6Bff
— NFL (@NFL) August 3, 2024
Seven years later, Hill was indeed No. 1. Fans met the announcement with skepticism. Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes, who had been crowned No. 1 in two of the previous three rankings, finished fourth. Baltimore Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson, the reigning MVP, finished second. In a FanDuel poll on X, 85 percent of more than 3,500 respondents disagreed with Hill’s top status. Many criticized the selection, saying someone else was more deserving or citing Hill’s history of legal issues.
This is precisely the “NFL Top 100.” Heated debates. Emotional reactions. Lightning-rod reveals. Fans and players have a complex relationship with the league’s annual player-driven poll, a list that tells us so much, but also so little.
In 2010, NFL Network produced a show that ranked the 100 best players in league history. Given the show’s success, the network wanted to repurpose the concept into an annual event. Behold, the yearly “NFL Top 100” was born, debuting moments after the 2011 NFL Draft concluded.
The concept was, and still is, simple: Rank the top 100 players of each NFL season, as voted on by their peers. No position requirements or team delegations. Players could even vote for themselves, and ballots could be anonymous.
Why 100? It was a numbers game. A 10-episode series, with 10 players per show, to bridge the gap during the NFL’s slowest time of the year “sounded pretty great,” supervising producer Adam Ryan said.
This year, that bridge is even longer, as the show moved to X. Since June 30, two players have been revealed each weekday on the social media platform, leading to the top 10 unveiling on NFL Network on Sept. 1. From 2019 to 2024, “Top 100” programming never lasted longer than two weeks. This year’s reveal spans 10 weeks.
“We had high hopes it would do well (on X), and it’s exceeding our expectations,” said Ryan, who has co-led the “Top 100” show since its beginning. “It cuts out the middleman because, look, it’s going to social media for debate anyway. Why not just get there quicker?”
Since its inception, the “Top 100” process has remained fairly consistent. Players vote for their top 20 peers: No. 1 receives 20 points, and the points decrease in value until No. 20, who receives one point. Around 350-400 players receive votes each year, Ryan said, and the players at the No. 100 cutoff are usually separated by only a point or two.
The poll’s biggest overhaul came in 2015. Instead of balloting players primarily at the Pro Bowl, the group began traveling to all 32 facilities. This increased participation among the league’s 1,700 active players from about 300 per year to between 900 and 1,100 today, Ryan said.
No. 1 on the ‘NFL Top 100’
YearPlayerTeamPrevious year
2024
Dolphins
7
2023
Chiefs
8
2022
Buccaneers
7
2021
Chiefs
4
2020
Ravens
NR
2019
Rams
7
2018
Patriots
1
2017
Patriots
2
2016
Panthers
73
2015
Texans
12
2014
Broncos
2
2013
Vikings
8
2012
Packers
11
2011
Patriots
N/A
NFL Films senior talent producer Erin O’Toole and others hand out ballots in locker rooms and cafeterias. The process starts after Thanksgiving, when the top players of a season begin to take shape, and most ballots are submitted well before the Super Bowl.
O’Toole has seen it all in 10 years around the NFL block.
“I have been in some legitimate locker room fights amongst teammates,” she said, recalling a feisty scene in 2015 with former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Le’Veon Bell leading the debate.
The most heated locker room? The Minnesota Vikings, O’Toole said.
The most credible voters? Las Vegas Raiders defensive end Maxx Crosby (“He really sits there and is very intentional with who he’s going to vote for”) or Denver Broncos cornerback Pat Surtain II (“He’s so humble, he won’t put himself on his own ballot, and he was just Defensive Player of the Year”).
The funniest moment? One year, a rookie turned in a ballot including Cleveland Browns left tackle Joe Thomas … years after his career ended. “I had to break it to him that Joe Thomas had been retired for like five years and was in the (Pro Football) Hall of Fame,” O’Toole said. “Sometimes they’re so locked in on their position and what they’re doing.”
There are always surprises and controversy. Fullback Vonta Leach ranked ahead of Tony Romo in 2011 and Peyton Manning in 2012, when Manning was recovering from neck surgery and had just signed with the Denver Broncos. The 2012 list also included a second fullback (John Kuhn) and Tim Tebow, whom the Broncos had traded to the New York Jets after signing Manning.
Some of the biggest eyebrow-raisers, especially at quarterback, become time capsules, depicting a flash in the pan or an outlier season. Joe Flacco was 19th in 2013 after a historic playoff run and Super Bowl title. Derek Carr reached 11 in 2017 after finishing third in MVP voting. Nick Foles (70th in 2014), Blake Bortles (56th in 2016), Case Keenum (51st in 2018) and Mac Jones (85th in 2022) each made cameos.
Ryan said he was “slightly surprised” with who ended up No. 1 this year, and that “you can make a strong case for everyone in the top five being No. 1.” Not even halfway through the reveals, the debates have started: Bo Nix and Sam Darnold over Dak Prescott? Cooper DeJean over Jalen Ramsey? There’s always something for fans to argue about.
“The whole point of the list is to obviously celebrate the great players in the league, but also, any time you have a ranking, it’s going to be a huge debate,” O’Toole said. “And for us, debate is really good for the show because it brings attention. We want people to agree and disagree.”
That debate comes naturally. Ed Hirt, a professor of psychological and brain sciences at Indiana University, has studied identity through the lens of sports fandom and allegiance. His research has linked positive self-esteem in sports fans to the success of that fan’s team, and vice versa.
Rankings are addictive because of how strongly fans identify themselves with their favorite teams and players, Hirt said.
“A lot of our pride in ourselves is wrapped up in how our team does, but also in terms of us being knowledgeable fans,” Hirt said. “While we think it’s kind of silly that we feel like we affect the outcome of the game, we still feel like we know a lot about our team, and we’re very invested in that. We play GM.”
Aaron Rodgers, right, is the only player to appear in every edition of the “Top 100,” but that streak could end this year. Tom Brady is second with 12 appearances but ranks first with four No. 1 selections. (Maddie Meyer / Getty Images)
But fans aren’t the only ones who drive conversation. Players haven’t been shy about their gripes with the rankings, either.
In 2021, D.J. Humphries called the list “made up” because he thought his then-Arizona Cardinals teammate DeAndre Hopkins should have been higher than No. 8. In 2022, former Cincinnati Bengals and Los Angeles Rams left tackle Andrew Whitworth, who appeared in the “Top 100” three times in his career, called the list a “joke” and “content filler.” They are far from the only detractors.
Ryan and O’Toole both said they are open to criticism, and feedback was one of the reasons they extended their balloting outreach in 2015.
“You’ll get the occasional player who criticizes that some people don’t take this seriously, and that’s true — some don’t,” Ryan said. “But when you have 900-plus ballots, it minimizes that.”
Still, ratings from peers come with inherent biases. Factors outside of game play — like a player’s team, level of media coverage or personal relationships — can impact voters’ perception. The NFL is not alone in that.
In this season’s WNBA All-Star voting, Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark ranked ninth among guards in player voting but third in media voting and first overall in fan voting. Although injuries have caused Clark to miss time this year, the voting discrepancy was hard to ignore.
“What does that rating reflect? Is it jealousy that people are pissed off because she gets so much more attention?” Hirt said. “There are all these speculations about where those rankings are coming from, and all those things could be true.
“It’s easy to criticize. The harder thing is to come up with what would be better.”
Ultimately, ranking the “best” players comes down to what each voter values. Players from the AFC West vote differently than their NFC West peers, Ryan said. And over time, it’s become clear that players are more likely to vote for someone they have played with or against.
“Sometimes there are head-scratchers on the list,” Ryan said. “Then I interview a player about them, and they have this personal story about how dominant he was on this day, and it showed up in the film room, and it showed up on game day. Maybe the general public doesn’t know about it, and maybe other teams don’t know about it, but this player sure does.”
The lack of position requirements has also opened the door for some voters to advocate for others they think most deserve the recognition.
“Offensive linemen love to make sure there’s offensive line representation on the list,” O’Toole said. “Which I love, because I think they’re the unsung heroes of the NFL.”
Even so, offensive linemen remain underrepresented, garnering just 125 selections in 14 editions of the ranking (8.9 per year), compared to 141 for running backs alone (10.1 per year). Only five times has an offensive lineman cracked the top 20, comfortably the fewest of any position except fullbacks and specialists. Running backs have done so 37 times. The best guard of his generation, seven-time All-Pro Zack Martin, never ranked higher than 53rd. Six-time All-Pro center Jason Kelce cracked the top 70 just once (37th in 2023).
How does the “Top 100” compare to how teams value players? Fifteen offensive tackles rank among the NFL’s 100 largest salaries (by annual average per Over the Cap, as of July 30), but only 5.4 per year have been ranked in the player poll since 2020. The other most underrepresented positions included defensive tackles and guards.
Linebacker representation is skewed in the opposite direction. Six linebackers currently have salaries in the top 100, but an average of 14.2 have appeared in the “Top 100” since 2020. It’s worth noting, though, that the “Top 100” ranking does not distinguish between edge-rushing outside linebackers and off-ball linebackers.
Unsurprisingly, quarterbacks are most likely to wear the crown, ranking No. 1 in 10 of the poll’s 14 years, pending 2025’s results. Big-name QBs are a staple of the “Top 100,” with Brady ranking No. 1 a record four times and Aaron Rodgers appearing on the list in every year of its existence (he ranked 92nd last year despite playing only four snaps in the 2023 season, but has not appeared on this year’s list so far).
“You usually think it’s going to be a quarterback every year, and more often than not, (it is), especially because it started in the Tom Brady dominant era,” Ryan said.
Trends have also changed over time. Running backs in the “Top 100” have steadily declined — from a peak of 15 (more than quarterbacks or receivers) in 2012 to five in 2024 — while the number of receivers has increased. That’s consistent with shifts in the contract market, where receiver deals have skyrocketed since 2022. Hill was the first wide receiver to rank No. 1 in the “Top 100.”
It’s all a test in social comparison theory, which Hirt explains as the tendency to judge ourselves based on how we compare to our peers. Even outside of pure rankings, social comparison is unavoidable in discussions around contract negotiations and trades. Of course, some players feel slighted by the “Top 100,” but that’s not necessarily bound to hinder their performance or attitude.
“We tend to see it as negative, but it’s a motivator, too,” Hirt said. “The question is, do you want to let it consume you?”
Most players’ opinions of the “Top 100” fall somewhere between admirable and apathetic. But as the years pass, the list’s legacy has grown, especially for younger players who grew up watching the show. Lamar Jackson was proof when he went from unranked in 2019 to No. 1 in 2020.
“I used to always watch the ‘Top 100’ on YouTube or NFL Network, not thinking I’d actually be the No. 1 player,” said Jackson, who was 14 when the show debuted, in his interview. “I’m really speechless right now.”
Moving most of this year’s “Top 100” programming to X was a step in the direction many behind the scenes saw coming. As for what’s next, O’Toole said she wants to continue leaning into fan interaction, perhaps with reaction shows, a concept they tested in the early days of the list.
Virtual balloting is a point of conversation each year, too. The network used online balloting during the pandemic in 2020, but participation dipped. For now, producers see advantages with in-person balloting and how it separates “Top 100” voting from that of the Pro Bowl, Ryan said.
“Hopefully, we continue to refine our process,” Ryan said. “Every time a player criticizes the list, we listen. We’re not going to get to 1,700 out of 1,700 players happy, but that doesn’t mean we can’t try.”
Fun facts
• Offense has always outweighed defense. Defenders have accounted for 44.9 spots on average and never more than 49. Skill position players alone (including quarterbacks) outnumber defensive players on average with 46.0.
• Jackson is the only player to jump from unranked to No. 1 in one year. He is also the youngest player to rank No. 1 (23 in 2020).
• In 2016, NFL Films began releasing the “just missed” players who ranked No. 101 to 110. Nine-time Pro Bowl center Maurkice Pouncey has been relegated to the “best of the rest” more often than anyone else, with appearances in 2017 (No. 107), 2018 (108) and 2020 (102). Pouncey twice cracked the “Top 100,” at 49 in 2014 and 83 in 2015.
• The most volatile player among his peers? That would be tight end Jimmy Graham, who was unranked in 2011, 14th in 2012, unranked in 2013 and 10th in 2014. Graham was also 31st in 2015, unranked in 2016 and 89th in 2017.
• The largest year-over-year drops have been by running backs: DeMarco Murray (No. 4 in 2015), Le’Veon Bell (No. 5 in 2018) and Jonathan Taylor (No. 5 in 2022) all fell from the top five to out of the next year’s list, while Adrian Peterson slipped from No. 5 in 2016 to 98 in 2017.
• Two kickers and zero punters have made the “Top 100.” Three fullbacks have combined to draw five selections.
(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; Photos: Carmen Mandato, Ezra Shaw, Ron Jenkins, Katelyn Mulcahy / Getty Images, istock)