Editor’s Note: This is an excerpt from “The Football 100,” the definitive ranking of the 100 greatest NFL players of all time. The book is on sale now. Order here.
The Pro Football Hall of Fame requires a five-year wait from retirement before players can be considered for enshrinement. The delay allows time for reflection so that recency bias does not influence decisions. Some players are so special, almost from the start, that they seem destined for Canton — or, in this case, possibly destined to appear in later versions of The AthleticTop 100.
DEEP
The NFL 100: From Derrick Brooks to Tom Brady, The Athletic looks for the best players in football history
(Denny Medley / USA Today)
Kelce is arguably in the top 100. He had more receiving yards than four of the five tight ends on the list (only Tony Gonzalez had more) and is the only tight end in league history with 1,400 yards in a season. He needs just 15 games to reach that milestone in 2020.
Kelce also owns the most productive three-year stretch for a tight end in league history, with 3,918 receiving yards gained from 2018-20. To adjust for the seasons, The Athletic divide each tight end’s top three-year yardage total by the total for the NFL leader regardless of position. Kelce’s yardage from 2018-20 was 96.1 percent of wide receiver DeAndre Hopkins’ league-best total in those seasons. Kellen Winslow (1980-82, 1981-83) and Charle Young (1973-75) are the only other tight ends to reach 90 percent of the leader’s total over a three-year period.
Jefferson needed just 15 games into his third NFL season to break Randy Moss’ single-season team record for yardage. He also set the NFL record for receiving yards in the first 49 games of a career. The top five players on that list include a quick starter who lost (Odell Beckham Jr.) and three bonafide all-time greats in Julio Jones, Moss and Jerry Rice.
That’s the kind of company Jefferson kept early in his career. It’s the elite of the elite, and it’s not like Jefferson landed in an incredibly favorable situation like scheme, quarterback or any of the variables that could have made a difference.
(Troy Taormina / USA Today)
Watt’s 77.5 sacks through the first 87 games of his career ranked second since 1960, according to Pro Football Reference, with an unofficial sack total going back that far. That’s also the second-best total since the NFL made sacks an official stat in 1982. Only Reggie White (94) had more in 87 career games.
White, Smith and the elder Watt are now in the Top 100. The younger Watt is likely to join them if he can hold his own physically. He missed just four games in his first five seasons before missing seven in 2022.
(Trevor Ruszkowski / USA Today)
The best pass rushers can rotate their bodies, lowering and extending as they turn the corner on offensive tackles toward the quarterback. When Garrett was just a rookie in 2017 and teammate Joe Thomas was a 10-time Pro Bowl left tackle entering his final NFL season, the veteran blocker called Garrett “twice as good” as Von Miller, then runner-up in the Defensive Player of the Year voting, in this diversity skill.
Only Reggie White and the Watt brothers had more sacks than Garrett through the first 84 games of a career. Garrett has 74.5, putting him just ahead of luminaries like Miller, Derrick Thomas, Bruce Smith, Andre Tippett and Richard Dent.
Only a six-game suspension in 2019 and a car accident in 2022 managed to derail Garrett as he continued to set a pace of Hall of Fame production in his first six seasons.
(Sam Navarro/USA Today)
Hill was arguably the NFL’s most feared player throughout his career. A seven-time Pro Bowl selection in seven seasons, he reached 75 touchdowns faster than every wide receiver except Jerry Rice and Randy Moss. Hill had 10 touchdowns on receptions, rushes or returns that covered at least 75 yards. Only Devin Hester (14), Ollie Matson (13), Bobby Mitchell (12) and Dante Hall (11) have more. Of those players, all but Hall have played at least 40 more games than Hill has played to this point in his meteoric career.
Instead of experiencing a drop in productivity after being traded away from Mahomes to Kansas City in the 2022 offseason, Hill set career highs with 113 catches for 1,632 yards in Miami, both behind Jefferson.
(Joe Rondone/USA Today)
Parsons is only two seasons into his career, so it’s very premature for us to include him on such a list. But none other than Lawrence Taylor called Parsons “special” early in the Dallas star’s second season.
Parsons, like Taylor, was Defensive Rookie of the Year. Taylor was Defensive Player of the Year in each of his first two seasons, and again after his sixth season, when he was also league MVP. Parsons was second in Defensive Player of the Year voting and a first-team All-Pro as a rookie after collecting 13 sacks and 20 tackles for months of absence after being selected No. 12 picks out of Penn State.
Parsons led the NFL in Pro Football Focus pressure rate in his first two seasons. But, as Taylor reminds, it’s still early.
“Let’s see if he can keep it up for 13 years,” Taylor said, referring to the length of his own Hall of Fame career.
(Darren Yamashita / USA Today)
Williams has earned Pro Bowl honors in each of the past 10 seasons he’s played, and he seems to have gotten better with age. The 6-foot-5, 320-pound Williams is widely considered the best in the league at his position two years after Washington traded him to the 49ers entering his age-32 season, which came after being missed by Williams sat out the 2019 season following the removal of a rare, life-threatening cancerous growth on his scalp.
“You just watch every game, every clip, he’s just physically dominating every guy in front of him, and the fact that he’s not being talked about anymore, I think it’s outrageous,” said San Francisco teammate George Kittle to reporters in 2021, Williams 11th in the league. “He’s a hell of a footballer who needs more recognition.”
Excerpt from “The Football 100” published by William Morrow. Copyright © 2023 by The Athletic Media Company. Reprinted courtesy of HarperCollins Publishers
