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 is not good. We’re not trying to hate; 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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This past season may have been the most turbulent of Gardner’s career, and that’s saying something considering he started his career with the Jets in 2022. Despite signing him to a huge extension in August, New York flipped after the Colts dangled two first-round picks, an offer that seemed too good to turn down. Gardner was traded after a seven-game losing streak to start the season. After he ramped up into the starting lineup in Indianapolis, a calf injury ultimately derailed the rest of his year. He played in 11 games and had no interceptions, the second time in Gardner’s four seasons he didn’t come up with a takeaway.
While Gardner has as much raw talent as any cornerback in football, that lack of ball production remains one of the factors keeping him from the top of the pyramid. He has three picks in four seasons, and after a remarkable 20 pass breakups as a rookie, he’s failed to crack double digits in that category the past two seasons. Don’t get me wrong, he’s still a fantastic coverage player. Gardner ranked ninth out of 120 cornerbacks with a sub-50 percent completion percentage allowed, and he had one of the higher snaps per target ratios in the NFL, meaning teams weren’t as keen to test him.
Still, the theme of Gardner’s career to this point has been that there’s meat left on the bone. Hopefully with a full offseason and a clean bill of health, he can start to realize that potential with the Colts. After the revelation that nearly the whole league had his age wrong and he’s really 24, it’s almost as if...
