Lamar Jackson Fell 67 Spots and Nobody Is Saying the Obvious Thing
He was No. 2 last year. Second. Behind only Saquon Barkley in the entire league, voted by the people who have to line up against him.
This year he came in at No. 69.
That’s not a slight dip. That’s the largest single-season collapse anywhere on this list, and it happened to a two-time MVP who is, by every reasonable account, still one of the five best quarterbacks alive. Which tells you something important about what the NFL Top 100 actually measures, and it isn’t talent.
Here’s the whole picture: every confirmed rank so far, the risers and fallers that matter, why the voting produces results like this, and our honest read on who ends up at No. 1 when the countdown wraps on September 4.
Where the NFL Top 100 Players 2026 Reveal Stands Right Now
The 2026 edition is the sixteenth season of the NFL Top 100. It’s voted on entirely by current players, which is the entire reason it looks the way it does.
One format change worth flagging: this is now an X Original series, renewed in January for a second season on the platform. If you’re still waiting for it on NFL Network, that’s why you’ve been confused.
The schedule:
- June 22 through August 21: two players revealed daily, 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. ET, Monday through Friday
- August 24 through September 4: one Top 10 player per weekday, 10 a.m. ET
- September 4: No. 1 is announced
As of this morning, the reveal has reached No. 35. Two more names drop today. That leaves 34 players unrevealed, and the biggest names in football are all still sitting in that pile.
NFL Top 100 Players 2026: Confirmed Ranks
Every placement below is confirmed via NFL.com’s official reveal posts. The reveal is ongoing, so this is the verified subset rather than a complete 100-through-35 list. We update it daily as names drop.
| Rank | Player | Pos | Team | Movement |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 35 | Jared Verse | DE | CLE | Up 18 |
| 36 | George Pickens | WR | DAL | Debut |
| 37 | Penei Sewell | OT | DET | Down 24 |
| 38 | Cooper DeJean | DB | PHI | Up 22 |
| 39 | Justin Herbert | QB | LAC | Up 17 |
| 40 | Trent Williams | OT | SF | Up 5 |
| 50 | Derwin James | S | LAC | Returning |
| 54 | Fred Warner | LB | SF | Down sharply |
| ~62 | Trevor Lawrence | QB | JAX | Up |
| 69 | Lamar Jackson | QB | BAL | Down 67 |
| 72 | Jordan Love | QB | GB | Third straight |
| 77 | Baker Mayfield | QB | TB | Returning |
| 80 | A.J. Brown | WR | NE | Returning |
| 89 | Kyren Williams | RB | LAR | Third appearance |
| 90 | Derrick Brown | DT | CAR | Returning |
| 91 | Montez Sweat | DE | CHI | Returning |
| 93 | Carson Schwesinger | LB | CLE | Debut |
| 94 | Creed Humphrey | C | KC | Returning |
| 95 | Demario Davis | LB | NYJ | Returning |
| 98 | Bryce Young | QB | CAR | Returning |
| 99 | Quenton Nelson | G | IND | Returning |
| 100 | Cameron Jordan | DE | NO | Ninth appearance |
Also confirmed in the 100-to-41 range without a precise slot we could verify: Xavier McKinney, Josh Sweat, Zach Allen, Jalen Ramsey, Bobby Wagner, Byron Young, Jack Campbell, Tetairoa McMillan, Azeez Al-Shaair, Ernest Jones IV, Travis Etienne Jr., Zay Flowers, Nico Collins, Dion Dawkins, Davante Adams, CeeDee Lamb, Jalen Hurts, Bo Nix, Brock Bowers, Caleb Williams, Joe Thuney, T.J. Watt and Joe Burrow.
One accuracy note. NFL.com’s own headline puts Trevor Lawrence at No. 62 while the article body lists him at 63. We flagged it rather than picking one silently. Everyone else just copied whichever version they saw first.
Biggest Risers and Fallers
This table is the actual story of the 2026 list.
| Player | Pos | Move | What Drove It |
|---|---|---|---|
| Lamar Jackson | QB | Down 67 | The largest fall on the board. A quarterback who was No. 2 last year is now outside the top 60. |
| T.J. Watt | DE | Down 30 | Peers cooled dramatically on a player who has spent years near the top. |
| Penei Sewell | OT | Down 24 | Bewildering, given he was PFF’s top-graded tackle overall at 95.1. |
| Fred Warner | LB | Down to 54 | A Week 6 ankle injury cost him three months. Perennial top-20 player, punished for absence. |
| Jalen Hurts | QB | Out of top 20 | After three consecutive years inside it. |
| Cooper DeJean | DB | Up 22 | First Pro Bowl and All-Pro at 23. Now moving to safety in Philadelphia’s base defense. |
| Jared Verse | DE | Up 18 | Beat his rookie sack total by three, then got traded to Cleveland in the Myles Garrett deal. |
| Justin Herbert | QB | Up 17 | Dragged the Chargers to back-to-back playoff berths behind a broken offensive line. |
| Josh Sweat | DE | Up 17 | Career-best sacks in his eighth season on a three-win Arizona team. |
| George Pickens | WR | Debut at 36 | 93 catches, 1,429 yards, nine scores in year one with Dallas. |
What the Vote Is Actually Measuring
Here’s the thesis, and we’ll back it with numbers rather than vibes.
The Top 100 is a recency and availability index dressed up as a talent ranking.
Three pieces of evidence.
Fred Warner is the cleanest case. At the moment of his Week 6 ankle injury, he was allowing the lowest completion percentage over expected among all linebackers at minus 18.9 percent. He was coming off a third consecutive All-Pro season. He played six games. He fell into the 50s. His peers didn’t decide he got worse. They just stopped seeing him.
Penei Sewell is the strangest case. He fell 24 spots in a year where he was PFF’s highest-graded offensive tackle both overall (95.1) and in run blocking (96.7), his third straight season above 91 in run blocking. Four consecutive Pro Bowls, three consecutive All-Pros. There is no performance-based reading of that drop. Offensive linemen simply don’t hold voter attention.
And Justin Herbert is the case that proves it cuts both ways. He jumped 17 spots after a season where he faced 268 pressures at a 43.3 percent pressure rate, both league highs, because his tackles were hurt. He threw 10 touchdown passes on the run, most in the NFL, and 1,192 passing yards under pressure, fourth-most. Voters watched a guy get hit constantly and keep winning. That’s a narrative they can see.
None of this makes the list worthless. It makes it a different thing than people treat it as. It’s a measure of how the locker room currently perceives you, which is genuinely interesting information. It just isn’t a power ranking of ability.
How the NFL Top 100 Voting Works
Step 1: Players vote. Not media, not fans, not the league office. Current NFL players submit ballots ranking their peers.
Step 2: The sample is the problem. Not every player votes, and participation isn’t uniform across teams. That’s a big part of why results swing so hard year to year.
Step 3: Voting happens on last season’s tape. The 2026 list reflects the 2025 season. This is why players who changed teams appear in their new colors while being ranked for what they did somewhere else. Jared Verse is listed as a Brown for a season he played in Los Angeles.
Step 4: Games played dominates. Miss significant time and you fall regardless of how you performed. Warner and Jackson are both examples.
Step 5: Positional bias is real and consistent. Quarterbacks and skill players cluster near the top. Interior offensive linemen and safeties get systematically undervalued. Creed Humphrey at 94 and Quenton Nelson at 99 are two of the best players in football at their positions.
Step 6: Reveals drip out over 11 weeks. Two per weekday until August 21, then the Top 10 one per day through September 4.
Step 7: No. 1 lands September 4, five days before the season opener.
Should You Take the Top 100 Seriously? Pros and Cons
The case for it
It’s the only major ranking sourced from the people who actually play against these guys. When a left tackle tells you who the hardest edge rusher to block is, that’s primary evidence no grading system can replicate. It also surfaces players who don’t get national coverage. Carson Schwesinger debuting at 93 after becoming Cleveland’s first Defensive Rookie of the Year since Chip Banks in 1982 is exactly the kind of name that never cracks a media list.
The case against it
The voting sample is opaque and incomplete. Injury absence gets punished far beyond its actual signal. Linemen and safeties are chronically underrated. And year-to-year swings of 60-plus spots for players whose ability obviously didn’t change that much undermine the whole premise. If Lamar Jackson can go from second to 69th in twelve months, at least one of those two rankings is badly wrong.
Our take: read it as a locker-room reputation survey, which is a genuinely useful thing to have. Just don’t use it to settle arguments about who’s better.
Who Ends Up at No. 1?
Thirty-four names remain. Saquon Barkley took the top spot in 2025. The 2025 list also had 16 quarterbacks in it with four in the top 10, so expect quarterbacks to dominate the back end again.
The serious contenders, in our order:
1. Ja’Marr Chase. The most feared skill player in football and the safest bet on the board. Cornerbacks vote too.
2. Myles Garrett. Coming off a trade to the Rams that made him the centerpiece of a Super Bowl favorite. Pass rushers who terrify offensive linemen do very well in this format.
3. Josh Allen. He was third last year and remains the most respected quarterback among peers. The default answer if voters play it safe.
4. Saquon Barkley. Repeat winners are rare but not unheard of, and he’s still the reigning No. 1.
5. Patrick Mahomes. Was fifth last year. Kansas City’s decline is real, and this list is not immune to team narrative.
Our pick: Ja’Marr Chase. Allen is the safer prediction, but Chase has the exact profile this vote rewards, an unstoppable skill player whose defenders will happily tell you he’s unguardable. If we’re wrong, it’s Garrett.
The genuine wildcard is whether anyone from the Super Bowl-winning Seahawks cracks the top five. Seattle had the league’s best scoring defense and the fewest yards allowed per game, and championship recency does move these ballots.
Common Mistakes People Make With the Top 100
Treating it as a talent ranking. It’s a reputation survey with an eleven-week publicity rollout. Those are different products.
Assuming everyone voted. Participation is partial and uneven. A player with a strong regional profile can outperform a nationally famous one purely on who filled out ballots.
Forgetting it grades last season. Every 2026 rank describes 2025 performance. Players in new uniforms are being ranked for work they did elsewhere.
Reading a fall as a decline. Warner and Sewell both fell hard while playing at an elite level. Missing games and playing an unglamorous position are the two most reliable ways to drop.
Copying a partial list without a timestamp. Two names drop every weekday. Any aggregator page without an update date is stale by definition, and most of them are.
Expert Tips for Following the Reveal
Watch the offensive linemen for the real signal. When a tackle or guard cracks the top 40, that means voters were overwhelmed enough to override the position’s built-in disadvantage. Trent Williams at 40 in his age-38 season, with a sack rate under one percent for five straight years, is the loudest compliment on this entire list.
Track the debuts, not the returns. Pickens, Schwesinger, Caleb Williams, Joe Thuney, Tetairoa McMillan and Jack Campbell all appeared for the first time. Debuts tell you who the league just started respecting, which is more informative than a veteran holding steady.
Cross-reference falls against games played. Before you argue someone got worse, check whether they simply missed time. It explains most of the movement on this list.
Expect a Seahawks bump. Super Bowl champions historically get a recency lift, and Seattle’s defense was statistically dominant.
Bookmark August 24. That’s when the Top 10 reveal starts, one per day. It’s the highest-engagement stretch of the entire rollout.
FAQ
Who is No. 1 on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2026? Not yet announced. The No. 1 player is revealed on September 4, 2026, at the end of the Top 10 countdown that begins August 24. Saquon Barkley was No. 1 on the 2025 list. Our prediction is Ja’Marr Chase, with Myles Garrett and Josh Allen close behind.
How far along is the NFL Top 100 2026 reveal? Through No. 35 as of August 6, 2026. Two players are revealed each weekday at 10 a.m. and 11 a.m. ET through August 21, then one Top 10 player per weekday from August 24 to September 4.
Who votes on the NFL Top 100? Current NFL players. It is not a media or fan vote, which is the source of both its unique value and its most obvious flaws. Participation is partial, so results swing significantly year to year.
Why did Lamar Jackson drop on the NFL Top 100 2026? He fell 67 spots to No. 69 after ranking second in 2025, the largest fall on this year’s list. The Top 100 heavily penalizes missed time and rewards recent narrative, and it grades the previous season rather than current ability.
Where can I watch the NFL Top 100 2026 reveal? On X, where the series now runs as an X Original after being renewed in January 2026. NFL.com publishes companion articles grouping each batch of ten with stats and analysis.
How many quarterbacks make the NFL Top 100? Sixteen quarterbacks made the 2025 list, with four in the top 10. Expect a similar concentration in 2026. Justin Herbert at 39, Lamar Jackson at 69, Jordan Love at 72, Baker Mayfield at 77 and Bryce Young at 98 are among those already revealed.
Is the NFL Top 100 accurate? It accurately reflects how players perceive their peers, which is real information. It is a poor measure of pure ability. Penei Sewell fell 24 spots in a season where he was the highest-graded tackle in football, which shows the limits clearly.
When does the 2026 NFL season start? Wednesday, September 9, 2026, with a Super Bowl LX rematch as New England visits Seattle. The No. 1 player on the Top 100 is revealed five days earlier on September 4.
The Verdict
Three things worth saying out loud.
Lamar Jackson at 69 is the single worst result this list has produced in years, and it should permanently change how people cite the Top 100. You cannot be the second-best player in football one year and the sixty-ninth the next. One of those numbers is a lie.
Penei Sewell falling 24 spots is the quiet scandal. He was the best offensive tackle in football by grade and his peers moved him down. If you want proof that positional bias is baked into this vote, that’s your exhibit A.
And the list is still worth following anyway. Not as a ranking. As a window into what the locker room notices, forgives and forgets. That’s a real thing to know, and no analytics model gives it to you.
Top 10 starts August 24. We’ll be here.
