July is the driest month of the year when it comes to NFL news, which makes it the perfect time for something like a top 100 players list. For the fourth straight year, we’re happy to bring you our 2025 NFLTR Top 100 Players.

We’re not the only outlet that does a top 100 — NFL Media has done one with at least some democratic input from current players since 2011 — but our goal is to give more credit to players and positions that are often easy to overlook, especially in the trenches. We build it using traditional and advanced statistics, awards, positional value, career trajectory and a good old-fashioned dash of the eye test. Our list won’t be perfect but the goal is to give as much credit where it’s due as possible.

We’ll be rolling this list out over the next couple of weeks, so keep checking back for updates to our 2025 NFLTR Top 100 Players list.

Resources:

20 – Buccaneers LT Tristan Wirfs

It’s going to be tough for the Buccaneers for the first few games of the season with Wirfs out because he’s legitimately one of the best at what he does in the NFL. Last year, Wirfs was No. 1 in the league in PFF’s pass block efficiency at 99 percent. He surrendered just 13 pressures over the whole season and zero sacks. In true pass sets, Wirfs was also No. 1 at 98.3 percent efficient, and he didn’t even allow a hit in those snaps. ESPN was also among the outlets that had high marks for Wirfs, ranking him No. 1 among all tackles in pass block win rate at 96 percent. Elite gets thrown around as a descriptor probably more than it’s warranted, but not in Wirfs’ case.

19 – Broncos CB Patrick Surtain II

Surtain became just the seventh cornerback ever to win the NFL’s Defensive Player of the Year Award, joining an illustrious list that includes Mel Blount, Lester Hayes, Rod Woodson, Deion Sanders, Charles Woodson and Stephon Gilmore. He finished last season with 11 pass deflections and four interceptions, one of which he returned 100 yards for a touchdown. But perhaps the most telling stat is that he led the whole NFL in snaps per target last year. Teams didn’t throw at Surtain unless they felt they had to. Right now, he’s the gold standard for cornerback play around the NFL.

18 – 49ers TE George Kittle

While last season was a rough one overall for the 49ers, it was another great season for Kittle. He recorded the fourth 1,000-yard season of his career and led San Francisco with 1,106 yards and eight touchdowns. Injuries ravaged San Francisco’s offense and left Kittle without a lot of help at times, but it somehow didn’t hurt his efficiency. Kittle set new career-bests with a remarkable 73.6 percent success rate — nearly 10 percentage points higher than his previous career-high — and an 83 percent catch rate. He also had the second-highest overall score in ESPN’s receiver analytics of any pass catcher, receiver or tight end.

The passing impact is just half the story with Kittle, though. He continues to be a force in the run game as one of the best blocking tight ends in football. PFF had him No. 2 in run blocking grade and the 49ers were once again an effective rushing offense despite a rotating cast of running backs in large part due to Kittle’s contributions. That versatility makes him one of the most important players on HC Kyle Shanahan’s offense and arguably the hardest one to replace.

17 – Cowboys WR CeeDee Lamb

Things didn’t come as easily for Lamb in 2024 as they did in 2023 when he led the NFL with a staggering 135 receptions. Missed time in training camp as the Cowboys drug their feet on a new deal led to some rust at the beginning of the year, and the eventual injury to QB Dak Prescott hurt the numbers for everyone on offense. Lamb finished the year with 101 catches for 1,194 yards and six touchdowns, a great year for most receivers but dangerously close to ordinary for a player like Lamb.

Lamb was still a terror to cover, racking up 3.52 yards per route run against man coverage per PFF. It felt like some of the details and consistency in his game were more prone to slipping, however. He tied for the lead in drops with 11 and PFF gave him the lowest receiving grade since his rookie year, ranking him 22nd at the position. In ESPN’s receiver analytics, Lamb had his lowest overall score since his rookie year and had a startlingly bad catch score of just six (6). That ranked 151 out of 156 qualifying receivers and tight ends. Fortunately, there’s good reason to think Lamb will bounce back in a better offensive environment this year. Catch score tends to vary from year to year, while open score, where Lamb ranked 14th-best at 78, is more stable and predictive.

16 – Chiefs DT Chris Jones

If you’ve followed along for this whole series, you’ll know I’m not a fan of using just sacks to rank pass rushers. Sacks don’t tell the whole story and disruption is also production when it comes to playing defense. Players with strong pressure numbers and win rates usually find their way into big sack totals sooner or later.

That’s why there’s no reason to panic about Jones notching only five sacks for the Chiefs last year. It might have been the lowest mark since his rookie season but Jones remained a force that opponents had to account for. PFF credited him with 88 total pressures, three fewer than last year when he had 10.5 sacks and nine fewer than 2022 when he had 15.5. Jones was No. 1 among all interior defenders in pressures, per PFF, and No. 1 in win rate. ESPN also charted him with the top pass rush win rate among defensive tackles.

Jones’ snaps have dipped slightly the past couple of years as the Chiefs have been cognizant of his age and making sure he’s ready for a deep playoff run. Still, he’s held up great and has shown no signs of slowing down. Other players are making a push, but for now Jones remains comfortably at the top of the pecking order at his position.

15 – 49ers LT Trent Williams

Injuries abridged Williams’ 2024 season and impacted him even in the 10 games he did player. The result was his worst performance since all the way back in 2018 with Washington. At 37 years old, there’s a chance age could finally be catching up with Williams, who has been the top tackle in football for years and will be a Hall of Famer one day. Still, he was far from a slouch when he was on the field. Williams was No. 2 in the NFL in pass block win rate, per ESPN, at 95 percent, and PFF ranked him 18th in pass protection efficiency at 97.5 percent. In true pass sets, he was sixth among tackles at 97.1 percent efficiency. Still pretty dang good.

14 – Bengals DE Trey Hendrickson

There haven’t been many players with more sacks than Hendrickson over the past five years, and no one has had more than has 35 sacks over the past two. He’s established himself as one of the NFL’s upper-echelon pass rushers and is currently holding out from training camp in pursuit of a deal that compensates him like his peers. By the numbers, he has a compelling case.

The veteran pass rusher was third in the NFL in total pressures with 83, per PFF, and the service also had him with the fourth-best pass rush productivity score and fourth-best win rate at 20 percent. ESPN gets its win rate in a different way than PFF but it also ranked Hendrickson highly — No. 2 among all edge rushers with a 24 percent win rate. Even when he wasn’t getting to the quarterback, and these numbers say he was getting to the quarterback a lot, Hendrickson found other ways to be effective, batting down six passes and setting a new career high with 32 stops.

Hendrickson’s camp has no doubt cited most of these numbers to the team in negotiations. While he’s said he doesn’t plan to play on the last year of his deal without an extension, hopefully both sides work out a compromise. Regular season holdouts rarely leave players better off, and these numbers prove how badly the Bengals need Hendrickson on their defense this season.

13 – Raiders DE Maxx Crosby

Crosby prides himself on his toughness and iron man streak, but the injuries became too much for him to overcome last year. He missed time for the first time in his career, losing five games to injury and compiling just 7.5 sacks. Still, the hallmarks of Crosby’s game like relentless energy and effort still showed themselves on the field. He racked up 17 tackles for loss and had the ninth-best pass rush win rate on ESPN’s leaderboard. Crosby was also one of just a few players to finish top ten in both pass rush and run stop win rate, ranking No. 2 in the latter at 37 percent.

New regimes often want to wait before handing out big-money contracts, but it should be notable that Raiders HC Pete Carroll and GM John Spytek handed out a massive new extension to Crosby this offseason when he already had two years left on his current deal. Crosby’s a perfect tone-setter for Carroll and his impact goes well beyond just the field.

12 – Steelers OLB T.J. Watt

Over the last five years, no NFL player has more sacks than Watt. He’s led the NFL in sacks three times in that span and won Defensive Player of the Year once, finishing as the runner-up two other times. He’s a relentless, game-wrecking terror who never takes plays off. Watt led the NFL with six forced fumbles last year, had 19 tackles for loss for the second straight season and racked up another 11.5 sacks to add to his gaudy career total.

Still, there was something a little off. Watt played all 17 games and PFF charted him with 599 pass rush reps, the second-most of any edge rusher in football. He only managed 57 total pressures with that number, 21st in the league. A respectable total to be sure, but not nearly as dominant as a player like Watt should be with those kinds of opportunities. Watt has been dinged a little in the past for being a player who wins more on grit, effort and instincts rather than pure pass rush dominance, but that was in discussions that were splitting hairs on whether he was the best pass rusher in the NFL or the third-best. Last year, ESPN’s pass rush win rate had him all the way down at 12th at 19 percent.

Obviously the Steelers were comfortable handing over a big deal with three years of guarantees, so they don’t foresee any dropoff coming even though Watt turns 31 in October. Players of Watt’s caliber have proven they tend to age differently than others, too, so it would not be surprising at all to see him in the race for DPOY yet again.

11 – Lions DE Aidan Hutchinson

This is an aggressive rating for Hutchinson but I’m ready to take the leap because of how absurdly good he was playing before breaking his leg. It can be dicey taking partial game splits and projecting them over a full season, but at the pace he was on, Hutchinson was going to run away with the Defensive Player of the Year award last year.

Hutchinson had 7.5 sacks and a forced fumble in five games (technically four and a half considering he went down partway through the Dallas game). PFF charted him with an astonishing 45 total pressures in 198 pass rushing snaps. The service has a metric called pass rush productivity score that weights sacks, hits and pressures against snaps played to see who the most effective rushers are on a snap-by-snap basis. Hutchinson’s score of 14.7 was nearly four points higher than No. 2, Browns DE Myles Garrett. PFF also charted him with an otherworldly 38.3 percent win rate, and that rose to nearly 50 percent on true pass sets when edge rushers can really pin their ears back and go. For context, Garrett was No. 2 in both categories at 23.1 percent on all pass rushes and 31.5 percent on true pass sets.

Obviously sustaining that over the course of a full season would have been difficult but it does serve to illustrate how dialed in Hutchinson was last year, only his third in the NFL and his age-24 season. While his injury was serious, every NFL player will tell you bone breaks are vastly preferable to ligament or tendon damage and Hutchinson has had plenty of time to rehab. There’s no reason to think he won’t be back to full strength in 2025, and based on what we saw in 2024, he has announced himself as one of the top-tier edge rushers in football.

The post 2025 NFLTR Top 100 Players: 20-11 appeared first on NFLTradeRumors.co.