It’s ranking season across the NFL right now. Just over a month ago, Windy City Gridiron ranked our top 50 players in the NFC North heading into 2026. The NFL Top 100 is being revealed slowly but surely leading up to the season, and ESPN has been ranking the top 10 players at each position according to NFL executives, scouts, and coaches. Most notably for the latter, Bears quarterback Caleb Williams cracked the top 10.
Pro Football Network recently dropped its top 100 players in the NFL heading into
the new season. I had the privilege of not only being involved in the voting process for the list, but I did the write ups for all 100 entries in the list. Three Bears players ended up selected in the top 100: Williams, left guard Joe Thuney, and right tackle Darnell Wright.
Williams came in ranked No. 90 on the list, slotting him as the No. 15 quarterback on the list. It’s worth noting that the rankings were based heavily on PFN’s Impact Scoring model, which objectively assigns a numerical value to each player’s performance that season based on individual factors at each position. The QB Impact Scoring model hasn’t been incredibly kind to Williams yet, but his heroics in the clutch and a staunch defender on the ranking committee in yours truly helped get him on the list.
Here’s part of my blurb on Williams’ ranking:
The obvious thing holding him back from the elite tier of NFL quarterbacks is his completion percentage, which was a disappointing 58.1% last year. That said, he finished in the top ten in both passing yards and passing touchdowns while leading the league in fourth-quarter comebacks. His playmaking ability and clutch gene are key factors in his ranking, and it’s safe to assume he’ll continue to climb up these rankings in time.
Though Thuney was named the inaugural Protector of the Year in 2025, it’s actually Wright who comes in as the higher-ranked Bears offensive lineman on this list. This is due largely to Thuney’s down performance analytically in 2023, having placed outside of the top 35 among guards. The weighting method takes into account roughly 60% of a player’s 2025 performance, 30% of their 2024 performance, and 10% of their 2023 performance.
Here’s part of my writeup on Thuney:
With a 91.1 PFN OL Impact Score, Thuney led all guards in the metric and placed second among all offensive linemen in 2025. His lower score of 75.3 in 2023 plays a slight role in his only being ranked No. 65 overall, but he’s been an impact player practically every year since entering the league back in 2016.
As well as part of my Wright blurb, coming off of a 2025 campaign in which he finished as a second-team All-Pro:
Darnell Wright has shown consistent progression over the course of his three years in the NFL, and heading into Year 4, he projects as one of the top right tackles in the league. His 85.0 PFN OL Impact Score last year ranked fourth among right tackles and seventh among all offensive tackles.
This fares well for the Bears heading into 2026, as they can feel comfortable in knowing they have a rising young quarterback with a talented offensive line in front of him. If Williams’ weapons can continue to develop the way they did in 2025, there’s reason to believe that players like Colston Loveland, Luther Burden III, or Rome Odunze could end up cracking these top-100 lists this time next year.
