Big Blue View
I was intrigued by Ed’s piece on Monday highlighting the New York Giants players who made the Pro Football and Sports Network’s Top 100 list. Like some of you, my first reaction was: 32 teams, 100 players, three Giants – sounds about right if you do the math. In reality three Giants was a generous amount, considering that one of the three, Malik Nabers, played fewer than three games before suffering a season-ending injury.
That then got me to thinking: Do more great players make for a great team? If so, how many others besides those three might make next year’s list if all goes well? Let’s face it, we all get hyped up over first round draft picks, because we expect them to become great NFL players, despite the evidence that shows that only somewhat more than half the first rounders in any draft become great or even good NFL players (the evidence being fifth year options that get picked up and extensions or second contracts signed – this year it was 22 out of 32). The featured image I chose for this piece is of the two Giants first-round picks, Sisi Mauigoa and Arvell Reese, throwing out the first ball at Yankee Stadium. They haven’t played a down in the NFL yet they are treated something like royalty, just as Abdul Carter and Jaxson Dart were last year.
So if the hypothesis that great players make for great teams is true, then we should expect PFSN’s list of the Top 100 of 2025 to be dominated by the best teams. Here are the teams represented most often in their top 100:
So much for the hypothesis. Only eight of the top 12 teams in great players in 2025-26 even made the playoffs. The Lions, No. 2 on the list with seven Top 100 players, didn’t. Of those eight, the Eagles (who lead the list with nine Top 100 players), Packers, Steelers, and Chargers (each with four Top 100 players) didn’t make it out of Wild Card Weekend. Two more, the 49ers and Texans, lost in the Divisional Round. The other two, the Rams and Broncos, lost in the Conference Championship games.
Neither Super Bowl team made the PFSN Top 12 list. Super Bowl Champion Seattle had only three, just like the Giants (Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Leonard Williams, Sam Darnold). New England also had only three (Drake Maye, Christian Gonzalez, and A.J. Brown, who wasn’t even a Patriot last year).
This matters (to me, anyway), because I’d like to be optimistic about the 2026 Giants, but I truly don’t know how many “stars” this team is going to have in the 2026-27 season. Let’s be optimistic about Nabers and assume that he, Burns, and Thomas make the list again. Who else might join them?
Here’s one clue: The positional breakdown of the Top 100 looks like this:
Whatever the specifics of the PFSN methodology, it’s clear that it reflects modern views of positional value, with quarterback, wide receiver, edge, and...
