{"id":754544,"date":"2026-07-10T11:34:19","date_gmt":"2026-07-10T11:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/754544\/"},"modified":"2026-07-10T11:34:19","modified_gmt":"2026-07-10T11:34:19","slug":"alim-mcneill-shut-out-from-top-10-dt-votes-by-nfl-execs-coaches","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/754544\/","title":{"rendered":"Alim McNeill shut out from top-10 DT votes by NFL execs, coaches"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Thursday morning, the Worldwide Leader in Sports dropped their fourth installment in the series, ranking the big men in the middle on defense: defensive tackles<\/a>. The top names on the list included the likes of Leonard Williams, Jeffery Simmons, Jalen Carter, and Chris Jones\u2014all familiar names who\u2019ve been part of the rankings in previous years. Quinnen Williams, Dexter Lawrence II, and Derrick Brown all returned as part of the top-10 rankings, too. But for yet another season, Detroit\u2019s Alim McNeill was nowhere to be found.<\/p>\n

Not in the top 10, not among the honorable mentions, not even in the \u201calso receiving votes\u201d section.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not surprising to see McNeill omitted from the list this offseason. After recovering from an ACL injury suffered in December of 2024, he was limited to 10 games last year, where he recorded just 1.0 sack, a forced fumble, three quarterback hits, and 23 pressures\u2014all of which were career lows since his rookie season. But digging into the rankings from years past as a memory refresher, McNeill only appeared once in the \u201creceived votes\u201d section last year in 2025. He was shut out in the offseason of 2024 after his breakout season, where he became the Lions\u2019 first defensive tackle since Ndamukong Suh to record 5.0 sacks, and couldn\u2019t crack the honorable mentions list in 2025 after he signed a four-year, $97 million contract extension midseason.<\/p>\n

McNeill is currently the league\u2019s eighth-highest-paid defensive tackle, and while Dan Campbell has mentioned that Mac doesn\u2019t have to be \u201cSuperman\u201d along Detroit\u2019s defensive line, Campbell and Brad Holmes know he has the ability. Holmes chose to make Aidan Hutchinson and McNeill his cornerstones along the defensive line, and since then, only the former has made a consistently productive impact. An offseason of strength training instead of rehabbing from an ACL injury should make all the difference for McNeill to be prepared and have that breakout season. 2026 is shaping up to be the most important season of McNeill\u2019s career, and maybe it will be the year he finally earns the attention\u2014and adulation\u2014from those around the league.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On Thursday morning, the Worldwide Leader in Sports dropped their fourth installment in the series, ranking the big…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":754545,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[4992,349,99],"class_list":["post-754544","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-detroit-lions-news","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754544","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=754544"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/754544\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/754545"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=754544"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=754544"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=754544"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}