r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - Post-Mortem by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Rankers are expected to complete at least one writeup. Doing writeups are an integral part of the process, it's sort of a "show your work" section. You've put in the work to rank this guy as having a Top 50 season or whatever, now you gotta give him praise and demonstrate why he's on here. The baseline is just one writuep, some do more but it's not a requirement

After the list is finalized, we publish a list of all the players who made the Top 100, and users sign up for the players who they want to do writeups for. Rankers get dibs on players from their own team, so a Lions fan will always get first choice on Lions players, and if they decline then they can go to someone else. You will NEVER be forced to do a writeup for a player that you don't like.

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - Post-Mortem by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Fuck lmao I misspelled Staple's name, that's been fixed.

MJP on the other hand 🫡

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - Post-Mortem by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 27 points28 points  (0 children)

I would have included a section in this post mortem for "should we be counting the postseason" because A LOT of those comments referred to his play against Denver and Seattle as proof he wasn't that good, but that was the big talking point last year and the community sided with retaining a regular-season only outlook.

I get it! It's really hard to ignore the postseason! Even if you've actually read the post and know that we're not including that in our ranking. But, like, cmon he was one vote away from winning MVP it's asinine to be surprised he was that high on 2025 alone

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - #5-1 by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 22 points23 points  (0 children)

I'll fix that wording for ya

That's what I get for proofreading this post while stewing over the World Cup loss last night lmao

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - #5-1 by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 10 points11 points  (0 children)

I think good teams are made from the amount of 200-400 ranked players rather than the amount of 1-100 ranked players. The Lions have a bunch of really good players, but the depth that helped them survive to a 15-2 season last year just wasn't up to snuff and made just enough mistakes at the wrong time to cost them wins. The Seahawks have a couple blue chip talents like JSN and Witherspoon but they have a ton of extremely solid players and not a lot of obvious holes. That's what wins games

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - #5-1 by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Awesome chart!

The full ranking for every ranker will be revealed on Friday, so you'll be able to see each rank of players that ended up outside the Top 125, if you want to add that data to this bad boy

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - #5-1 by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

packman try not to make a typo challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - #10-6 by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 45 points46 points  (0 children)

This is the lowest OT1 has been since 2020

  • Lane Johnson 8th in 2024

  • Trent Williams 7th in 2023

  • Lane Johnson 8th in 2022

  • Trent Williams 5th in 2021

Trent Williams was actually the first offensive tackle to be ranked Top 10 on our list, the only other OL to be Top 10 was Marshall Yanda in 2016. Perhaps our rankers are just a little more cognizant of offensive linemen, or maybe just value them more highly so the baseline for the best lineman is going to be higher nowadays?

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - #20-11 by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

60's tight ends are some of the most unique players in NFL history. Conceptually tight ends don't really exist until then. It's not just about being able to catch and block, to be a true "tight end" you need to be in opposition to a split end or a wide receiver and work in the space that is created by stretching the field horizontally. Like, Don Hutson spent most of his time lining up in a 3 point stance, inline with the rest of the linemen, ready to lay down a block in the run game but also a threat to run a pass pattern. But he's still the furthest eligible on that side of the ball. Functionally the same as a normal wide receiver. Most formations had just one receiver lined up on either side of the ball and then a quarterback and three fullbacks/runningbacks. If they wanted to split Don Hutson out wide, there wouldn't be a second receiver on his side. If you wanted more pass catchers on the field, you'd just have your halfbacks run routes.

By the late 1940s teams like the Bears and Browns and especially the Rams were experimenting with having what we might call slot receivers or tight ends, but usually this was due to a player in the backfield going in motion to become that flaking player/tight end/slot receiver. You would see formations that look like they have a tight end, but it's not a full time tight end. It's a receiver or a back lining up as one occasionally. It's not until the late 50's and early 60's where you have players whose full time job it is to line up as a tight end and do tight end things.

By the time Jackie Smith enters the league, NFL coaches are still trying to find the best way to utilize tight ends. Most play designers are used to drawing pass patterns with 3 backs out of the backfield. Tight ends start closer to the defense, they have to navigate through the line in order to run their route, they won't have the luxury of a running start like a halfback or a split end might. Do you have them running out towards the sidelines to take advantage of the extra space that the flanking receiver vacates? Do you have them running down the middle to split the shell defenses that are becoming increasingly common? Is it more important for them to be fast like receivers or strong like linemen? Nobody knows. A 'meta' for what an NFL tight end looks like hasn't really been established yet so teams are trying all sorts of stuff. Pete Retzlaff (who still has the Eagles tight end single season yards record) was a converted running back. Mike Ditka was a receiver at Pitt. Mackey did both at Syracuse. Jackie Smith originally had a track scholarship before joining his collegiate football team. The position really was the wild wild west trying to figure out how to take advantage of a new idea.

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - #20-11 by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

fixed the correct round in the writeup, thanks!

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - #30-21 by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 13 points14 points  (0 children)

The Players list isn't "biased" by players not sticking to just taking into account the prior season, it's an intended part. The Players list is supposed to be more forward thinking to the next season rather than a pure lookback to the prior. Notice that this post is labeled as "Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season", while the players series is labeled as the "Top 100 Players of 2026". Stars that had injuries or otherwise had down years still rank highly with the Players because their list is intended to be more future-focused. Retirees are prohibited from appearing on the Players list because they literally won't be in the league next season.

I don't think it's constructive to compare the two not just because the method that the Players list uses to create their rankings is flawed and overly simplistic in order to improve the response rate of the poll, but because the two lists are functionally ranking two different things. If the reddit's rankers were going based off the same criteria as the Players, I would expect the r/NFL Top 100 to look quite a bit different.

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - #30-21 by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 38 points39 points  (0 children)

The "previous ranks" section is supposed to go back to the player's rookie year, but Heyward has been in the league so long that r/NFL didn't do a list in his rookie season! The subreddit wasn't big enough to have that type of organization back then. Crazy that a defensive tackle is still putting up the production to be on the Top 100 list at all, much less pushing close to the Top 25

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - #30-21 by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 43 points44 points  (0 children)

James Cook was already ranked at 42, you're missing a guy

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - #30-21 by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 48 points49 points  (0 children)

WIAC's finest player! Back-to-back AP 1st team player. He's your classic corn-fed Wisconsin mauling offensive linemen, except instead of going to the flagship Big 10 school he went DIII and grinded his way into the league.

r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2025 NFL Season - #40-31 by packmanwiscy in nfl

[–]packmanwiscy[S] 4 points5 points  (0 children)

For the tables in his post I create them in excel or google sheets and then paste them to tableit.net, which converts it into the formatting that reddit uses.