The NFL’s 101 best players for the 2025 season: 10-1

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.

This article brings players 10-1, and you can read the previous pieces here:

The NFL’s 101 best players for the 2025 season, Nos. 101-91
The NFL’s 101 best players for the 2025 season, Nos. 90-81
The NFL’s 101 best players for the 2025 season, Nos. 80-71
The NFL’s 101 best players for the 2025 season, Nos. 70-61
The NFL’s 101 best players for the 2025 season, Nos. 60-51
The NFL’s 101 best players for the 2025 season, Nos. 50-41
The NFL’s 101 best players for the 2025 season, Nos. 40-31
The NFL’s 101 best players for the 2025 season, Nos. 30-21
The NFL’s 101 best players for the 2025 season, Nos. 20-11

With all of that preamble out of the way, here are my 10 best players in the NFL for the 2025 season.

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

How best to describe what Justin Jefferson has meant to the Minnesota Vikings since he was selected with the 22nd overall pick in the 2020 draft out of LSU? Let’s go with what Jefferson has done in a historical sense.

Among all receivers in pro football history through their first five seasons, Jefferson ranks second behind DeAndre Hopkins (735) with 730 targets, third behind Michael Thomas and CeeDee Lamb with 495 receptions, first overall in receiving yards with 7,432 yards, tied with several players with 40 touchdowns, first all-time in receiving yards per game with 96.5, tied for second all-time in yards per target with Michael Irvin (10.2) behind only Jerry Rice’s 10.4, and first all-time in receiving first downs with 326.

Of all the receivers in the NFL today, Jefferson may be the toughest to cover. Whether outside or in the slot, his top-level speed is only one issue defenders have to face. Jefferson is able to find voids in every type of coverage, and his ability to sink into a route without losing speed is unequaled. It’s why he’s able to make any coverage look like something most defensive coordinators would have drummed out of their playbooks a quarter of a century ago.

With Sam Darnold as his quarterback in 2024, Jefferson had 108 catches on 158 targets for 1,591 yards and 10 touchdowns. With J.J. McCarthy or anybody else as his primary quarterback in 2025 and beyond, Jefferson will put up similar numbers, because he’s as quarterback-proof and scheme-transcendent as any receiver you can name.

With all that said, Justin Jefferson isn’t the most dominant X-iso receiver in the NFL today; that honor goes to Ja’Marr Chase. At 6’0 and 201 pounds, Chase deals with contested catches like a guy four inches taller and 25 pounds heavier, but he can run and elude like a 5’10”, 180-pound slot receiver. It’s a pretty decent skill set to have, and Chase’s ability to be the open man no matter how he’s covered, or how many defenders are on him, is the result.

In the 2024 season, Chase became the 13th player in pro football history to win the receiving triple crown, leading all pass-catchers with 127 catches for 1,708 yards and 17 touchdowns. Chase turned 25 on March 1, and he’s got a new four-year, $161 million contract extension with $73.9 million guaranteed that will keep him in Cincinnati through at least the 2029 season, so it’s safe to say that as great has Chase has been so far, the best could be yet to come.

This was a complicated evaluation. More often than not in the lists I’ve done, Patrick Mahomes has been the No. 1 player overall, and usually, I don’t need to think too much about it. The 2024 season brought some things to the fore, however, that went beyond the Chiefs’ inability to give him the offensive line and receivers he needs.

Overall, it was another great season for Mahomes; no surprise there. He completed 447 of 664 passes for 4,607 yards, 31 touchdowns, 13 interceptions, and a passer rating of 94.5. That is, however, the second-lowest passer rating for Mahomes in his career as the Chiefs’ full-time starter since 2018, and the lowest came in 2023 (94.1).

The real issue last season was the deep ball. The Chiefs selected Texas speed receiver Xavier Worthy in the first round of the 2024 draft, and if you thought that this would alleviate an issue that has been present since the Tyreek Hill trade, think again. Mahomes was among the NFL’s worst quarterbacks on passes of 20 or more air yards, completing 16 of 54 for 589 yards, six touchdowns, four interceptions, and a passer rating of 78.7. Only Anthony Richardson, C.J. Stroud, Caleb Williams, and Kyler Murray had lower passer ratings on deep passes, and Mahomes’ Positive Play Rate of 32.7% was the NFL’s seventh-worst among quarterbacks with at least 25 attempts.

The obvious answer here is that Mahomes wasn’t given the protection needed to make those deep throws, and while that was true to a point, there were too many instances in which he had the time and the target to make those plays, and he simply didn’t.

Maybe it’s the attrition of the years in which Mahomes has had to hold his entire offense up by the scuff of the neck. Maybe the Chiefs’ reworked line with new left tackle Josh Simmons and new left guard Kingsley Suamataia will help. As center Creed Humphrey (No. 30) and left guard Trey Smith (No. 60) each made this Top 101 list, that would be a spicy meatball. And maybe Mahomes will have enough healthy and capable receivers in 2025; this would also be a nice change of pace.

Mahomes has already talked over and over about making defenses pay for the ways in which they’ve covered his passing game over the last few years. We would not be among those to bet against him.

Well, Jerry Jones went and did the one thing nobody thought he’d be crazy enough to do. After waiting too long in the Dak Prescott and CeeDee Lamb contract situations, but ultimately getting the deals done, Jerrah actually traded Micah Parsons to the Green Bay Packers on Thursday.

Jones has done a lot of weird things in his time as the Cowboys owner, but this really takes the cake. Not only is Micah Parsons the most devastating speed rusher of his era, he’s among the most productive early-career pass-rushers… well, ever.

It doesn’t matter who the quarterback is, either. While Jayden Daniels was ripping the rest of the NFL to shreds in his rookie season, Parsons said to him, “You still gotta go through me, son,” and racked up five sacks and seven total pressures in two games against the Washington Commanders.

And Parsons isn’t just a demolition machine from the edge; he can also destroy protections when aligned over the center or guard in special blitz packages.

As to his value to the Cowboys’ defense… well, let’s get real here. Last season, Parsons missed four games and 372 snaps with an ankle injury. Without him on the field, Dallas’ opponent offensive EPA rose from +0.07 to +0.13, opponent passing EPA rose from +0.01 to +0.17, the Cowboys’ blown block sack rate fell from 21.1% to 15.0%, and the blown block sack rate fell from 5.7% to 2.8%.

That’s all gone now.

This is the original conclusion I had for the Micah Parsons section of our program:

Jerry Jones may be dumb, but he’s not stupid, which means that eventually, he’ll give Micah Parsons what he wants. Because deep down, Jones knows that his defense — and his team — is so much worse without its best player.

Welp. Jerry Jones is both dumb and stupid in this case. He put the Green Bay Packers on point to be a Super Bowl contender, and he proved once again that winning plays a distant second banana to his infinite ego.

As for the Packers? They just secured the best pass-rusher they’ve had since they signed that Reggie White guy in 1993. Super Bowl incoming? Perhaps.

It is usually an exaggeration to call an NFL player truly unique, but in the case of Dexter Lawrence, we’re not gilding the lily when we do so. In 2023, his last fully healthy season, Lawrence lined up 63% of the time as a true zero-tech nose tackle right over the center, or as a one-tech shade tackle to the center’s shoulder. And when he did that, Lawrence had five sacks and 45 total pressures.

In 2023, the second most prolific pass-rusher from nose tackle alignments was Jarran Reed of the Seattle Seahawks, who tallied three sacks and 21 total pressures. Certainly in recent NFL history, there’s nobody else who can put up halfway decent edge-rusher stats as the most interior of interior defensive linemen, especially when he’s double-teamed most of the time, because if you don’t double-team Sexy Dexy, your offense is going to die.

Lawrence got off to a similarly hot start in 2024, with 10 sacks and 36 total pressures in the season’s first 12 weeks, before a dislocated elbow ended his season. The Giants put the 6’4, 340-ish pound Lawrence out at three-tech tackle more of the time, and Lawrence responded as he’s responded to everything else in his NFL career — with total destruction on an epic scale.

The 2025 Giants are obviously loaded for bear along their defensive line with Brian Burns, Kayvon Thibodeaux, and rookie Abdul Carter on the edge. But anybody in the know will tell you that Dexter Lawrence calls the shots, and it all flows through him — because he is the best and most unique interior defensive lineman in the game today, with a pace to add “ever” to that description over time.

In 2024, the Cincinnati Bengals scored 30 or more points in eight of their 17 games. They finished 4-4 in those games, and ended the season with a 9-8 record (their second in a row) and a postseason miss (also their second in a row).

None of that was Joe Burrow’s fault. In his fifth NFL season, the first overall pick in the 2020 draft out of LSU played about as perfectly as any quarterback could with a defense that dragged his winning opportunities into the pishadoo at every possible opportunity. Burrow completed 460 of 652 passes (70.6%) for 4,918 yards (7.5 yards per attempt), 43 touchdowns, nine interceptions, and a career-high passer rating of 108.5.

Why is Burrow so special? Let’s begin with his pocket movement — not movement outside the pocket, but his specific ability to run around in that miniature boxing ring and still make dynamic plays under pressure. From the pocket last season, Burrow completed 417 of 575 passes for 4,405 yards, 37 touchdowns, all nine of his interceptions, and a passer rating of 109.4. And when pressured, Burrow completed 107 of 183 passes for 1,438 yards, 15 touchdowns, three interceptions, and a passer rating of 104.0. This is important, as Burrow’s offensive line has rarely been league-average at best.

You can say that Ja’Marr Chase and Tee Higgins make Burrow’s life easier, but let’s go back to the 2023 season, when Burrow lost seven games due to injury. Chase’s EPA per target dropped from +0.35 to +0.25 with Burrow off the field, and Higgins’ dropped from +0.08 to +0.05, so maybe that goes both ways.

What makes Burrow most interesting is that in an era when second-reaction ability outside the pocket is a near non-negotiable for quarterback success, he’s the old-school outlier who can do everything from the pocket. Were he a true runner in that sense as well, he might be the slam-dunk best player in the league every year with no argument.

When I asked Josh Allen a few months before the 2024 season how things would be different under full-time offensive coordinator Joe Brady, now that Brady had the “interim” label dropped from his title… let’s just say that Allen was pretty psyched about the idea, and he threw a few shots at Brady’s predecessors.

It played out pretty well. Allen was at his most efficient in the 2024 season, as he took all of his YOLO athleticism with him into Brady’s offense without the YOLO aftereffects. He completed 365 of 565 passes (64.6%) for 4,367 yards (7.7 yards per attempt), 32 touchdowns, six interceptions, and a passer rating of 102.6. And few were more terrifying when throwing deep — Allen led the league with 87 attempts of 20 or more air yards, completing 33 for 1,052 yards, five touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 93.8. He did that all without a true deep threat, and Allen was also the NFL’s most efficient passer on throws behind the line of scrimmage, with 104 completions in 112 attempts for 744 yards, five touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 109.2.

Allen is still a physical marvel, but 2024 was the season we saw him truly trust the coaching staff, and play within the structure more often than not. One example of this was how he thrived in Brady’s intelligent use of pre-snap motion. Previously the Bills offense had been more static pre-snap, but under Brady, Allen completed 257 of 393 passes with pre-snap motion for 3,128 yards, 25 touchdowns, five interceptions, and a passer rating of 105.6.

Again, Allen was doing this without the benefit of a true alpha receiver. And yes, he still ground up opponents in the run game, with 636 rushing yards and 14 rushing touchdowns on 131 attempts. But 2024 should be remembered as the season in which Josh Allen married the stuff you can’t coach to the stuff you have to coach, and did it all with aplomb. What that means for the Bills’ Super Bowl chances is anybody’s guess, but there is no NFL defense that looks forward to dealing with No. 17 at any time.

Running backs don’t matter, huh? Running backs are fungible, eh? You never want to pay too much for a running back, right?

Well, when Eagles general manager Howie Roseman gave Saquon Barkley a three-year, $37.75 million contract with $26 million guaranteed before the 2024 season, a lot of people thought that Roseman had gone off the rails. Not only has Roseman never paid a lot for any running back, but throughout his career since the New York Giants selected him the second overall pick in the 2018 draft, Barkley has alternated between seasons in which he was an MVP candidate with yards from scrimmage galore, and seasons in which he could barely take the field due to injuries.

Roseman bet on the best Saquon Barkley possible, and as much of a personnel genius as he’s been, even Roseman would likely tell you that he had no right to expect what happened after that contract was signed. Including the postseason, which ended with the franchise’s second Super Bowl win, Barkley ran the ball 436 times for 2,504 yards, 18 touchdowns, 80 forced missed tackles, and 32 runs of 50 yards or more.

Perhaps the most insane metric in a host of what may have been the best running back season in pro football history is that the 2024 Eagles nearly had more explosive plays in the run game than in the passing game. Eagles quarterbacks combined for 28 completions of 20 or more air yards, while Barkley had 21 runs of 20 or more yards on the ground. And when it came to killing defenses with runs longer than that, nobody was in Barkley’s class — Barkley had runs of 41, 55, 59, 60, 62, 65, 68, 70, 72, and 78 yards.

Should we also mention that Barkley caught 46 passes on 54 targets for 353 yards and two touchdowns? Let’s do. Now, with that many touches in a season, most running backs tend to fall apart in subsequent campaigns. Once again, the Eagles are betting against the odds with Barkley’s two-year, $41 million contract extension in March with $36 million fully guaranteed at signing. The Eagles had no choice, because if Barkley is even 75% this good through the remainder of his contract, he’s a historic weapon, and more Super Bowls could be on the way as a result.

How do you figure out who’s the best defensive player in football?

The best way is probably to narrow it down to the guys who do the most with the least around them, and dominate regardless of the circumstances. Same as you figure out who’s the best in any sport, in any situation.

In 2024, Myles Garrett totaled 14 sacks and 83 total pressures on a Browns defense that was so injury-riddled, it plummeted from second in DVOA in 2023 to 25th in 2024. The Browns’ second-most-effective pass-rusher was interior defensive lineman Dalvin Tomlinson, who had four sacks and 36 total pressures. Only five other Browns defenders had more than one sack in the entire season.

So you would expect that Garrett would be subject to a host of double-teams. He was, but more often than not, it became a humiliating nightmare for the guys doubling him as Garrett knifed through every protection, regardless.

At 6’4 and 272 pounds, Garrett’s tape tends to look like science fiction more often than not, because he moves like he weighs 30 pounds less and hits like he weighs 30 pounds more. And as the caretaker of Cleveland’s defense on a no-matter-what basis, Garrett has been right when challenging the franchise’s desire and ability to be real contenders.

That Garrett agreed to a new four-year, $160 million contract with $123.596 million guaranteed even after demanding a trade shouldn’t get the Browns off the hook when it comes to being smarter overall, but you know how these things go. Hopefully Garrett, who will turn 30 on Dec. 29, won’t be one of those all-time cautionary tales about players who were denied postseason opportunities because they were never with a team that wanted to (or simply couldn’t) match their individual greatness.

Because the individual greatness is undeniable.

And now, here’s the best player in the NFL today.

When people argue the point as to who’s the best quarterback in the NFL today, which generally leads to the best overall player in the NFL today, there can be all kinds of nuance involved.

So, let’s make this simple. Last season, Lamar Jackson was the NFL’s best quarterback in each of the following circumstances (deep breath)…

Throwing passes of 10-19 air yards: 91 of 127 for 1,577 yards, 19 touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 149.8.

Throwing passes of 20+ air yards: 30 of 73 for 960 yards, 11 touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 122.3.

With play-action: 142 of 176 for 1,423 yards, 15 touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 134.0.

Outside the pocket: 45 of 85 for 893 yards, 11 touchdowns, no interceptions, and a passer rating of 129.6.

How did he do under pressure, you ask? Well, Joe Burrow was slightly more efficient when disrupted last season, but Lamar completed 87 of 171 for 1,117 yards, 14 touchdowns, two interceptions, and a passer rating of 94.1 when set off his spot.

Speaking of his spot, how did Lamar fare in the pocket, since there’s still a cottage industry of dum-dums who insist that he’s just a run-around guy? How about 305 of 435 for 3,708 yards, 34 touchdowns, five interceptions, and a passer rating of 117.3? You could say that Joe Burrow was slightly better in this instance, but we are splitting hairs.

By the way, all these metrics include the postseason, and that wasn’t a problem for Mr. Jackson last season as much as people may make it out to be: 34 of 46 as a passer for 429 yards, four touchdowns, one interception, and a passer rating of 122.5 tells the story there.

This is the same quarterback who ran the ball 160 times for 1,035 yards and four touchdowns, so even with the addition of Derrick Henry, a ton of the Ravens’ dominant run game went through the NFL’s best passer. Jackson’s regular-season passer rating of 119.6 was the fourth-best in pro football history, behind Aaron Rodgers in 2011 and 2020, and Peyton Manning in 2004.

Again, we can debate the little things, but when it comes to the overall picture, there wasn’t a better player in the 2024 NFL season than Lamar Jackson, and that’s how we’ll wrap this up.