NFL Trade Rumors
July is top 100 season in the NFL as everyone tries to kill the days until training camp and the start of the new season. Unfortunately, the official top 100 list from the league sucks. We’re not hating or going out of our way to tear down another outlet; it’s just a well-accepted fact at this point in time.
For five years, we’ve been trying to do better. The time has come for the 2026 version of our NFL Trade Rumors Top 100 Players. Instead of using player polls, we aim to better reflect reality with traditional and advanced statistical analysis, evaluations from league personnel, positional value, awards, career trajectory and, of course, the good old-fashioned gut check. Our hope is to give more credit to players who are overlooked, either because they don’t play a glamorous position or because they’re not household names (yet).
We’ll have updates daily over the next couple of weeks, so keep checking back!
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It’s been a rollercoaster career for Young, the former No. 2 overall pick and 2020 Defensive Rookie of the Year. He had just 1.5 sacks in the next two years after that peak, held back by injuries and (by his own admission) taking his early success for granted. He was traded in Year 4 and in Year 5 he was on his third different team. But he earned a long-term deal with the Saints and Young’s trajectory is climbing yet again. He finished last year with 10 sacks, the first double-digit sack season of his career.
Even more impressively, Young hit that mark in just 12 games. A calf injury sidelined him for the first five weeks of the season, and when he returned he went on a tear. ESPN ranked him seventh among all edge rushers with a 19 percent pass rush win rate. His 49 total pressures were 32nd out of 123 qualifiers in PFF’s database, but he racked those up in fewer than 300 pass-rushing reps. The average of everyone ranked above him was 471 pass rush attempts. Staying healthy and playing more is the next step for Young to take, but if he can do that, he’s poised to rocket up this list.
There’s a high bar for safeties to make this list, and there’s probably an even higher bar for rookies. But Emmanwori had such a cool rookie season that I felt like he had to be an inclusion. He had a huge impact for the Super Bowl champion Seahawks. There are the on-paper stats which were great — 2.5 sacks, nine tackles for loss, 11 pass breakups and an interception. You could go a little deeper even and cite his league-leading...
