Imagine if, every year, your co-workers were asked to name the best of the best in your industry. Now, imagine those results were tabulated and put into a ranked list of the top 100. Then, to put the cherry on top, those results were televised!
That is the reality for NFL players, who, every summer, hope to earn themselves a spot on the NFL Top 100. The list is an annual tradition that dates back to 2011, when the league had the idea to poll its players for the first edition of the Top 100. The goal wasn’t to start fights, incite the social media militia, or even give players validation. “It was more, the NFL Network needs good content,” says Adam Ryan, a supervising producer at NFL Films who is co-head of the Top 100 show.
With the help of senior talent producers Erin O’Toole and Kaley Campen—the ones who go from team to team collecting ballots from players—the NFL Films crew not only publishes the big, grand list every summer, they also do sit-down, on-camera interviews with players who have firsthand experience playing against the top 100. Those interviews, along with highlight reels of each player, comprise the countdown show that reveals the list.
“It’s a cool honor, because you know the whole process and you know how it’s voted on, so you realize, ‘Oh this is pretty cool. It was voted on by my peers,’” says Adam Thielen, the veteran wide receiver who appeared on the list in 2018, 2019, and 2021. “It’s the greatest honor, in my opinion, to be recognized by your peers.”
Here’s how it all goes down. Voting happens during the season, typically from Thanksgiving to New Year’s, when it’s clear which players have separated themselves from the pack in a given year. O’Toole and Campen go into the locker rooms at team facilities with paper ballots, asking players to rank their top 20 guys in the NFL. “We hand them the ballot, we hand them the Sharpie, they get to do it themselves and hand it right back to us,” Campen says. “A lot of these guys have seen our faces year after year. They'll see us and right away be like, ‘It's top 100 time of year again.’”
A number one spot is worth 20 points, a second-place vote is worth 19, and so on. Once all the ballots are turned in, the data goes into a spreadsheet at league headquarters that spits out the final ranking. Whichever player has the most total points gets the highly-coveted title of No. 1 Player, as voted by their peers. It also comes with a shiny silver trophy, which is currently in the possession of one Patrick Mahomes.
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While Thielen says getting left off entirely stings much worse than being ranked behind someone you think you’re better than, there is some hemming and hawing over positioning. “I think as a competitor, you want to be as high as possible!” he concedes. “The initial reaction is, ‘Man, I was left off this list? That’s crazy!’ You can find motivation from it [though]. It pushes you and drives you to have a better year.” When asked if players will advocate for themselves to be on the list, he says not too many engage in such naked politicking, as everyone in the NFL would rather let their film do the talking.
The current election system can’t ensure that every single player in the league casts their vote, but the turnout has jumped from roughly 300 in the early days to over a thousand now, per Ryan. Players are not given any direction as far as what positions to vote for, and the final list does not have a set number of spots allocated for certain positions, offense vs. defense, or representation by team. When O’Toole and Campen depart from a team facility, they’ll leave extra ballots behind so players who they may have missed still have a chance to make their voice heard. (A few years ago, the ballot brigade jokingly gave out ‘I Voted’ stickers.) The top spot has gone to a quarterback in nine of the 12 years—Adrian Peterson, J.J. Watt, and Aaron Donald are the only non-quarterbacks to ever receive the No. 1 honor—but because guys from every position vote, every position is represented. For instance, last year’s list featured eight offensive linemen, and two kickers (Justin Tucker and Adam Vinatieri) have cracked the top 100 in years past.
“We actually physically walk around the entire locker room,” Campen explains. “We hit every position group, and it's a mix. Some guys are heavier on their teammates, some guys might be heavier on their position, and some guys are really fair across the league, every position.” Ryan adds that voting also usually follows a trend: Dudes vote for the guys that have cooked them recently. “Sometimes a guy from the AFC West doesn't really have any thoughts on Jalen Hurts,” he remarks. “But someone from the NFC East sure does!” For the interview portion, players specifically talk about guys they’ve faced in the last year, to ensure the most vivid memories. From his years of experience, Ryan has noticed that players will always hype up their old college teammate, but when it comes to rivals, whether collegiate or pro, he hears a lot of, “I respect him, but I'm not going to mention his name.”
The problem, though—at least according to Thielen—is how the plebiscite is conducted. Not just the methods used, but the motivation of the voting body, who are players coming into the locker room after a grueling day of practice. “The bad thing about the whole thing is that nobody wants to do it,” he says. “Everyone hates when they come around. I think the voting process probably isn’t the best it can be, but those ladies do a great job. It’s not an easy job getting guys to write those names down. Guys do not want to do it. It’s late in the season, you’re tired, you’re not wanting to do anything outside of football,” he says, respectfully.
Other players have expressed harsher criticism. In 2021, then-Arizona Cardinals tackle D.J. Humphries called the whole affair “bullshit” and “made up.” Andrew Whitworth, a fellow offensive lineman who’s been on the list three times, said it was a joke. Their complaints made it back to NFL Network HQ. “We took that criticism really, really, really seriously,” Ryan says. “We can't force everyone to vote, but we want to do as good a job as we can to give them the opportunity to.” O’Toole insists that on voting days, she and Campen will remain in a team’s building until the eleventh hour, often cutting it close at the airport when it’s finally time to leave town.
Thielen—who admits he’s more likely to vote for a guy if he’s personally been bested by him—has some ideas for how to improve things, citing online Pro Bowl voting as a solid model. “I think it should be almost like a checkmark system where you have an online vote, but every single player has to do it.” he begins. “I don’t know how you can enforce that. But if you say, ‘You have until this day to complete the list, pick the guys that you feel are deserving of being a top 100 player,’ maybe incentivize it or something. But I think it has to be an online voting system to try and get everyone to vote on their own time. That would make it as easy as possible, but also make it legit.”
After 13 years, the show not only holds a special place in the NFL’s offseason schedule—the first chunk of the countdown usually airs as teams are reporting to training camp, aka the unofficial return of ball—it also has enough longevity to be associated with players’ childhood memories. O’Toole and Campen have served nearly a decade of Top 100 duty, and when they interact with the players, oftentimes they’ll hear a familiar refrain. “They'll be like, ‘Oh, I grew up watching this and I am so excited to take part,’” O’Toole says. “We're like, ‘Well, that makes us feel old, but we're so excited that you're excited about the top 100!’" (Perhaps the enthusiasm for voting—or the lack thereof that 33-year-old Thielen spoke about—is fractured along generational lines.)
A favorite part of the process for everyone on the league side is when they get to inform a player that they’ve made the list for the first time. The crew generally tries to avoid letting players know in advance, which can lead to heartwarming moments. In 2023, for example, the fairly anonymous Atlanta Falcons guard Chris Lindstrom checked in at No. 87. For someone whose job is all dirty work in the trenches, Lindstrom didn’t think anyone was noticing him. So when he officially found out he had been named one of the best 100 players in the NFL, “He was like, ‘People are voting for me?’” O’Toole remembers. “And we're like, "Yeah, you're pretty good. You should be on this list!’”
The first installment of this year’s countdown drops at noon eastern on Monday, when players 100-81 will be made public on NFL+, with the rest being slowly released in the following days, until 10-1 are unveiled on August 2 with a special show on NFL Network. The player interviews will also hit the NFL’s official YouTube channel on August 9.
When pressed about whether he expects to be in there somewhere, Thielen—who had a bounce back year in 2023, playing his first season with the Carolina Panthers and hauling in 103 catches for 1,014 yards—showed some of the competitive fire that made him a three-time lister in the first place.
“Yeah, I think so! I feel like I’m a top 100 player, but that’s out of my control.”