Some SERIOUS idiots here. I'm a Ravens fan, and even with the team we beat in the Super Bowl having 10 more players than us, I can find very few things wrong with this list. Drew Brees really didn't have a great year last year, if all you are looking at is yards and TDs, compared to actually watching him play, you would agree. J.J. Watt had one of the greatest seasons by any player at any position ever last year. Your guys football knowledge is clearly limited to watching highlights on ESPN. The guys at PFF watch more football then everyone commenting here combined. And for the 1,000th time since you guys apparently can't read: THIS LIST IS FOR 2012 PERFORMANCE ONLY. ANYTHING DONE IN THE PAST DOESN'T MATTER!

Just cause they watch more football, doesn't mean they understand it more. Also, most of us household analysts and armchair QBs aren't fully considering play-calling and situations, let alone spillover and teammate influence. Leaving out players like Foster and Chaarles seems to nullify this top 101 list, but it depends how you want to define the top 101. Yes, I'm still talking about performances from last year. I definitely agree with #1 though. JJ Watt was ridiculous. Kudos to PFF for trying anyways and doing a solid job

How can you possibly include things that aren't quantifiable? They do a great job with things considering.

Foster and Charles have nothing on Ray Rice bum C'MON Man he had significant performance against the 49ers in the Super Bowl

I find it interesting that you think there are a lot of idiots here, and follow that up by saying that you can find few things wrong with this list.

JC not making it at all tells you all you need to know.

I see everyone saying Charles deserves to be on the list, but I've yet to see anyone give any reason other than "he ran for a lot of yards against 9 men in the box". Which PFF has already shown he in fact faced 8 or more in the box one of the LEAST amount of times. He's one of the least elusive backs in the league, he usually just takes what his line gives him, and over 40% of his yards came on just 19 rushes. I'd love to see him manage that again.

Actually PFF has stated on more than one occasion that the elusive rating suffers when a players is so fast they beat defenders to the edge often - Charles is the poster boy for that (and was brought up as such by PFF)

Least elusive? what are you stupid?

He has the HIGHEST Yards per carry EVER at 5.8 with over 700 carries.

but be honest some stuff on this list is questionable. no Demarcus ware or jamaal charles is questionable. Cj spiller is ahead of brady. Megatron had one of the greatest seasons of any WR and he was at 11 when last yr he was 3 on NFL networks list. No Arian Foster. Vincent Jackson ahead of AJ Green, thats blasphemy.

CJ Spiller is everything you think Jamaal Charles is. Demarcus Ware wasn't even the best OLB on his own team last year. Calvin Johnson got an insane amount of targets last year, and turned it into the most YARDS ever, but had only FIVE touchdowns. His year last year was twice as good as this year. Arian Foster? Did you watch him last year? He was awful. And this list isn't based on potential so yes, AJ Green is behind Vincent Jackson, who was phenomenal with Josh Freakin' Freeman as his cornerback. Everyone needs to drop their previous season bias.

Josh freeman plays cornerback??? Tell me why isn't Andrew luck on this list, he did win like 7 games by his damn self.

This list is only from last year. Jamaal Charles only had an average of 5.3 last year. C.J. Spiller averaged 6.0. If you think Spiller is garbage, you haven't seen a single game that he played last year.

Rofl so wrong, tell me that when Spiller gets his 5.4 up to a 5.8 yards per carry

Spiller wishes!

That's because Vincent Jackson is head and shoulders better than AJ, sorry to burst your bubble.

Thirteen 49ers! We Ravens were so lucky to win the Super Bowl facing that "star studded" team. LOL

The Hawks crushed them by 29 but they were lucky to get the division by a half game. Guess that makes them special somehow to somebody. They might get a wildcard this year, but I think the Rams will continue to have their number and keep them out of the play-offs altogether. Seattle owns the division.

Seattle doesn't own the division. One fluke season, that's it. Heck, it was more like just a couple of games.

you really want to compare nfc west titles since seattle came back into the division?

so now you want cherry-pick from periods that don't even matter? Why don't we also mention that San Francisco has 5 super bowl titles while seattle has NONE. Because they are both as meaningless right now. And SF has more NFC West titles than Seattle. It's not their fault Seattle had to get kicked out of their old division.

You want to talk the past (since we came back into the division) or current? If were talking current we owned your ass last time we played. Cant have it both ways kids..

If you think winning in Seattle against us is better than actually beating Atlanta and going to the Super Bowl, sure, have it your way. We split the season series too anyways.

P.S. Just remember:
49ers last two years: 2 NFC Champ games, 1 SB, 2 seasons over .700 winning %

Seattle 37 year history:2 NFC conference champ games, 1 SB, 2 seasons over .700 winning %

I know it sucks to realize Seattle is not the best team ever in the Northwest bubble up there. I mean, it's not like the Seahacks have ever won anything meaningful EVER

You said 1 fluke season bringing in the context of multiple seasons. Seattle has the most division titles since coming back to the nfc west. Cant say im surprised to see you bring up the superbowls from a time when we werent even in the same division. Typical 49ers fan.

Typical Seahawk fan, cherry-picking a small 8 year period out of the 47 years of the Super Bowl era to prove a point and still not having good enough facts to back up your point

Actually, SF has way more division titles than Seattle does. Not our fault you guys got kicked out of the AFC West. And I'm just reminding you that they both are as meaningful right now, none at all, but if you do want to go that way, you can't cherry-pick only a certain time period.

really "we ravens" what position do you play

He plays the 12th man like all the rest of us. You too.

left out

ummmm lol u really were

Yeah, they went to the Super Bowl. It only proves they're a star-studded team.

Holy troll factory. Most people commenting understand football about as well as they can read. Notice the year 2012 associated with the list. What Drew Brees did in kindergarten has no context.

If you are looking for a list the ranks players based statistical output, please visit ESPN. If you are looking for a list that ranks players based on how a player played on every snap they played, please enjoy. Instead of physically threatening the authors maybe engage in a debate on why you think player X should be more recognized or why you think player Y is overvalued.

I think its an interesting list and for the most part coincides with how I think players played this season. Players like Joe Flacco are impossible to rank. The Ravens probably don't win the Super Bowl with any other QB, but if Moore and Bailey don't blow coverage Flacco doesn't make the list and is probably on another team right now or playing under the franchise tag.

Hard to rank another receiver higher than Calvin Johnson. I don't think I've seen another receiver tackled a couple yards from the end zone as much as he was this season.

I agree with Foster not being on this list. He didn't run well last year, despite his stats. Even he has said that he didn't run as well as he could last year.

foster had to deal with line problems, he's a stud that always wants to do better. using that crapola to try to rationalize saying that his season wasn't among the 101 best played is ignorant.

I'm not sure how that's ignorant, but I think you could have replaced Foster with several running backs in the league last year and get the same or better level of production than he gave. I love the guy and think he can be a great runner. Was his line as good as has been, no. But neither was he.

Maybe concentrate on breathing first. Seems like that would be challenging enough.

30 - 50 mistakes is being conservative. No wonder everyone thinks this site is garbage.

By the way, it should be "We will now leave it up to the professionals at NFL network" not "We will know leave it up to the professionals at NFL network".
May want to leave publishing up to the professionals as well

Joe Flacco #100? Ridiculous.

I'm not sure which way you're going with that? Its ridiculous he isnt ranked higher, or its ridiculous that he's even on the list?

its ridiculous he is even on this list. he had two games where his QBR were close to 0.0 he had some god awfull games this year. the playoffs helped him a ton.

Your an Idiot!!

you're* an idiot stephen

He should of been #101, I agree, 100%

Drew Brees at 79? Are you out of your fucking MIND? Wow.

Alfred Morris and Doug Martin? WHAT? Where is Jamaal Charles?

Hey PFF...Go Eat A DICK!!!!

Analysis from reddit user and /r/nfl frequenter, srasmus4 (http://www.reddit.com/user/...

Let me play devil's advocate here and try to defend PFF's selection and explain their criteria. PFF looks primarily at what backs do after contact, with the exception of Rice and Gore all their top backs are in the top 15 of elusive rating. Rice is there for his receiving and Gore is there for his running and pass blocking but he's probably overrated at 71.

Elusive rating is based off of yards after contact/attempt and forced tackles/touch (attempts+rec). Charles didn't do well in either one averaging 2 Yards after contact/attempt and one broken tackle every 13 touches. Their top backs tended to have 2.7-3.5 yards after contact per attempt and one missed tackle every 5-6 touches, charles numbers in this respect were significantly worse.

One could say that Jamaal Charles's that often involves burning people with his speed isn't properly evaluated this way and PFF will always be down on him. I'm not entirely sure that's true. He was ranked #7 on the top 100 in 2010 and in the past has done a lot better on the same metrics.

In 2009 Charles had 3.6 Yards after contact per attempt and forced 28 missed tackles on 230 touches for 1 every 8.2 touches. In 2010 he had 3.2 Yards after contact per attempt and forced 28 missed tackles on 275 touches for 1 every 9.8 touches. This year was, certainly by those metrics a down year for him, interestingly PFF's fantasy department predicted these stats would suffer with him coming off an an ACL tear.

While the only numbers I could find on his breakaway percentage (% of yards coming on runs of 15+ yards) were from week 4 it was pretty high at 50.7% (though I know his end of the season numbers were somewhere between 56.5% and 39.9% putting him at second most in the league). Now the breakaway percentage isn't actually a negative stat with Peterson leading the league in it and Spiller and Morris actually in the top 10 as well. However Spiller, Morris, Lynch and Gore were all in the top 15 of PFF's pulse rating which is your yards per carry if all runs of longer than 10 yards are only counted for 10 yards and they all broke a lot of tackles. Since Charles has a lot of breakaway yards, a low pulse rate, and not that many more breakaway runs than Morris, Martin and Spiller it seems like his breakaway runs were likely for much longer distances.

In PFF's mind while he had a lot of yardage most of it came on long runs without a high pulse rating or a lot of missed tackles to back it up. By his own standards he didn't force many missed tackles and he didn't get many yards after contact. I wouldn't say they think he's a bad back considering they rated him very highly in the past just that they think his ability to avoid tackles took a hit after an ACL tear.

Also of the top 20 running backs in terms of yardage only McCoy and Bush had a lower attempt to fumble ratio. Charles Fumbled once every 57 attempts with the average among top 20 backs being once ever 120 touches.

As for the blocking PFF ranked the kansas city offensive line 9th in run blocking and thought Eric Winston in particular was an excellent run blocker.

Qualitative data cannot be organized in any meaningful way.

So him coming back from a ACL tear means nothing? The fact he still rushed for over 1500 yards on a horrible passing team means nothing? The fact that he has the best average in history accounts for nothing? This list doesn't say top 101 elusive backs it says top 101 PLAYERS!!! There ar4e people I've never heard of on that list and I consider myself to have exceptional football knowledge, but Charles is easily a top 5 back and they have 7 on here and he is not one of them. I'll tell you what's elusive and thats the fact finding performed by this website.

The fact that he came back from an ACL tear does in fact mean nothing. The fact that he has the best average in history also means nothing.

And his 1500 yards without elusiveness and breaking tackles is simply 1500 yards through open lanes. Running in space is easy, running between defenders is not.