This is why fans should rarely give NFL decision-makers the benefit of the doubt
ESPN has been pushing out a series of articles in which they rank the top 10 NFL players at each position. But this isn’t your ordinary ranking crafted out of thin air by some random guy on the internet with an opinion (much like yours truly). These rankings were created by polling nearly 80 “league executives, coaches, and scouts.”
Surely, these opinions are going to be extremely well-informed. These guys do nothing but grind film and talk football 24/7/365, so I cannot wait to see a list that corrects the baseless narratives formed by 8-year-old Instagram commenters and engagement-farming Twitter accounts. We will get definitive player rankings that are rooted in facts and thorough analysis from the best in the business.
Whenever the results of that survey drop, give me a shout. Because whatever ESPN is putting out right now could not have been concocted by NFL executives, coaches, and scouts.
Or… perhaps it’s exactly what we should expect from these people.
I was hoping this series would provide some unique insight from the perspective of people who have made it to the pinnacle of the football decision-making business. Instead, the analysis is quite literally no different than what I’d see if I opened up the comments of a TikTok video.
Sauce Gardner – who was named a first-team All-Pro in back-to-back seasons, earning more than twice as many first-team votes as any other cornerback across those two seasons – was ranked as the third-best cornerback, trailing Denzel Ward and Patrick Surtain.
That’s a crime in itself, but fine. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. Maybe they have a good reason for it.
Then you see this quote:
“‘One of the most overrated players in the league,’ a high-ranking NFL personnel evaluator said. ‘You could call holding on him every play.'”
I was watching Gardner’s Twitch stream yesterday, and there was a troll in the chat spamming this line almost verbatim. Now just imagine if that person was “a high-ranking NFL personnel evaluator.” Oh, wait, you don’t have to imagine it. It’s real. Someone’s favorite team is making decisions informed by a guy who cannot evaluate cornerback play any more thoroughly than ineedajob543 on Twitch.
This quote was even worse:
“The handsy rep is becoming a thing, and a few established personnel executives left him off the top 10 altogether.”
Dude. A few “established personnel executives” left him outside of the top 10? If you want to be petty and put him second or third, fine. But if he’s outside your top 10, you are either salty that he’s not on your team or you have invalidated all of your future opinions on the sport of football.
Okay, maybe NFL people just aren’t overly fond of players who put themselves at risk of committing penalties. I get that. Hatred of penalties runs in a football guy’s blood, right? Coaches live for making players run gassers as a punishment for penalties.
Then you scroll down to the fourth-ranked player, L’Jarius Sneed, and you see this:
“He’s handsy in coverage, committing an NFL-high 17 penalties last year, mostly for holding. But coaches swear by him.”
Now is a great time for a little math lesson. Sauce Gardner has committed five penalties in each of his two NFL seasons. L’Jarius Sneed committed 17 penalties in the 2023 season, the most of any defender. While I don’t have a calculator handy, I think 17 penalties in one season is a lot worse than 10 penalties in two seasons.
Yet, one of these guys has a “handsy rep” while the other is “handsy but.”
The anti-Gardner narratives are quite hilarious. They say he holds on every play. Yet he’s only been called for 10 penalties in 33 games. So, why isn’t he being flagged more often? The only sensible argument they could make is that the league is biased for the New York Jets.
Read that sentence out loud again, but try not to laugh this time.
.@NFL @NFLOfficiating Your employee Frank Steratore confirms the completion of an interception before throwing flag for alleged "holding" pic.twitter.com/9jpA9BrhH2
— Michael Nania (@Michael_Nania) October 2, 2023
The reason Gardner has developed this reputation is because people aren’t used to seeing a cornerback being attached to his man so consistently. As shown by the chart below, Gardner led all cornerbacks in PFF’s “separation prevented” metric in 2023. Whereas most cornerbacks are usually chasing guys around, Gardner is almost always on his man’s hip – creating more opportunities for people to complain about so-called “holding” when he’s actually just providing lockdown coverage that other cornerbacks can’t.
Final 2023 rankings for CB separation prevented and target % faced pic.twitter.com/IoVRY7vHPK
— Jrfortgang (@throwthedamball) January 11, 2024
While I would understand that @TuaIsHim2024 on Twitter might struggle to comprehend this, I would hope NFL officials grasp the concept. Clearly, many of them don’t.
And it’s not just Sauce. The voters’ egregious misunderstanding of their own league spreads to other positions.
Quincy Williams was a first-team All-Pro linebacker in 2023, earning the third-most first-place votes at his position. He led the NFL in defensive stops and led linebackers in pass breakups. Where can we find him?
Not even in the top 10. He was the third honorable mention.
I would understand not placing him first, second, third, or even fourth. But considering he was an honorable mention, it’s likely that at least half of the voters did not even include him in their top 10. How in the world could this happen? How are these people so unaware of the sport they work in?
Tremaine Edmunds made the list at No. 8 despite ranking 40th among linebackers with 35 defensive stops, less than half of Williams’ 80. Edmunds also tied for the most touchdowns allowed among linebackers with five, and he allowed the sixth-most yards into his coverage with 611.
Most of Edmunds’ statistics are very poor, but he did excel in one category: interceptions. He tied for the lead among linebackers with four picks.
So… are you telling me that NFL officials voted Edmunds into the top 10 solely because of interceptions? You’re kidding, right? This is classic “Google the box score” behavior that I would expect from someone who only watches football because they were invited into their office’s fantasy league yet talks about it as passionately as an actual player on the team.
The most shocking thing about Williams being left out is that his playstyle should appeal to NFL people. He’s a highlight machine who routinely makes the rounds on social media for his bone-rattling hits. Fotball guys should love that. Because of how he plays, you would think the voters would skew in favor of him even if he didn’t have the All-Pro status and the position-leading metrics. Plus, unlike Gardner, Williams doesn’t have a popular narrative attached to him that could influence opinions.
With those things in mind, I would not be surprised if Williams’ exclusion from the top 10 occurred because some of the voters just flat-out forgot that he exists. Why? I don’t know. Maybe it’s because he plays for a perennially irrelevant Jets team. Maybe because he was a former third-round pick who got waived early? Whatever the reason, it should not matter. Suffice it to say, I would want my top decision-makers to know who the league’s All-Pro linebackers are.
Okay, so you probably think I’m just writing this article to complain about the anti-Jets snubs, right? Wrong. To show you I’m not being a salty Jets writer, allow me to reveal some equally boneheaded analysis that involves AFC East rivals.
Bills defensive tackle Ed Oliver ranked fourth among defensive tackles in pressures (65) and sacks (9.5) last season. Not only was he not voted into the top 10 defensive tackles, but he wasn’t among six honorable mentions, either.
Patriots safety Jabrill Peppers did it all last season. Among 74 qualified safeties, he allowed the fewest yards per reception (6.6) and the eighth-lowest passer rating (54.6) in coverage. On top of that, he tied for fifth at the position with 17 run stops. Like Oliver, he missed the top 10 and didn’t even get an honorable mention.
NFL fans are often left with their mouths agape at the decisions their favorite team makes. You, the educated fan, can know that Christian Hackenberg is an impending bust, and yet Mike Maccagnan will still send Chad Pennington up to the podium to announce Hackenberg as a second-round pick. “How could a professional football team come to that conclusion?” we wonder.
Well, this survey is your answer. These guys don’t know a whole lot more than you and I do. At least they haven’t given us any reason to believe it.
This survey exemplifies why there isn’t quite as much parity in the NFL as there could be. This is a league with only 17 games in a season. It is a high-variance sport in which wins can become losses based on an oddly shaped ball deciding to bounce one way instead of the other. The NFL is hand-crafted for maximum parity, and yet, many franchises are continuously successful while many are continuously bad.
Why? Well, we have prominent decision-makers in the league who think Sauce Gardner and Quincy Williams aren’t top 10 players at their position, and they can’t tell you why without using lazy narratives.
The lack of overall parity in the NFL starts with the lack of talent-evaluation parity. I can almost guarantee that very few people from the Ravens or Eagles snubbed Gardner, Williams, Oliver, or Peppers. I feel confident surmising that most of the people who gave these baffling votes work for organizations that make equally baffling decisions on draft day and in free agency.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion, and I’m not saying that I expect the entire league to agree on these lists. Evaluating football players is a subjective endeavor. However, ESPN’s poll features a shocking number of wildly off-the-mark takes, suggesting there are many people in the league who have no business being in the roles they were given. It points to how wide the gap is between the evaluation skills of the league’s top organizations and its bottom feeders.
This really shouldn’t happen on a planet with thousands of people who are passionate about football. Only the best talent evaluators in the world should be in the NFL. I’m not sure that is the case, though.
After all, the NFL is largely constructed around nepotism. If I had to guess, this is the reason why we are not seeing more parity. Instead of looking outward and hiring smart, dedicated people who clearly know more than a scout who’s only around because he’s been there for 40 years, teams just hire their buddies, their buddy’s buddy, or their nephew. With few outside-the-box hires, you get this never-ending cycle of poor evaluators hopping between low-end organizations while the elite organizations hoard all of the good ones.
NFL fans, keep questioning your favorite team’s decisions. They usually do not deserve the benefit of the doubt from you.
