The players have spoken. According to the NFL Network’s series of the Top 100 players in the league as voted on by the players, Browns tackle Joe Thomas, Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger, and Falcons tight end Tony Gonzalez are all roughly equal.
(And the players complain about the job the media does with the Hall of Fame voting. Yikes.)
Thomas is arguably the best left tackle in football and he finished No. 43. I assumed he would crack the top 10 or at least the top 20 in votes, but his low profile didn’t help him out.
Roethlisberger possibly was punished by other players for his off-field issues. He comes in at No. 41, behind six other quarterbacks.
Falcons tight end Tony Gonzalez came in at No. 46. We’ll let Chris Cooley speak for us here:
“He is not the 46th-best player from 2010,” Cooley said on NFL Network. “He’s a year away from retirement if he doesn’t retire this year. So you are telling me that if they did a draft right now, he would go 46? If we do a Top 100 list of all time, he makes it. But not based on 2010.”
Cooley said Gonzo was the best tight end of all time. That case can be made, but we’d argue he’s not even a top-ten tight end right now.
We know that rankings are meant to be argued with, but the methodology for this series seems faulty. Players voted on their top 20 players in the NFL; and that was compiled to make a top 100.
That means Donovan McNabb, who came in at No. 100 in the rankings, was actually in someone’s top 20 list. That means Gonzalez was in a lot of top-20 lists.