‘What Are We Doing Here’ — NFL Analyst Makes Feelings Clear About Lamar Jackson’s Surprise Ranking in the NFL Top 100
· Yahoo Sports
Lamar Jackson dropped 67 spots on the NFL Top 100, from No. 2 to No. 69. The players have made this exact mistake before, and it took them about a year to reverse it. Ian Cummings didn’t waste time on diplomacy when the ranking came up on the PFN’s Football Debate Club.
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“Lamar Jackson ranks 69th in the NFL,” Cummings said. “What are we doing here? That’s the ranking that was given to Jackson by the annual NFL Top 100 players list. By contrast, PFN has Jackson as a second overall player in the league.”
Why PFN Ranks Lamar Jackson Second While the NFL Top 100 Ranks Him 69th
The case against Jackson is a single season, and it isn’t a mystery. He played 13 games in 2025, missing three early with a hamstring injury and another late with a back contusion. He threw for 2,549 yards with 21 touchdowns and seven interceptions, ran for only 349, and fumbled seven times. His PFN QB Impact score dropped to 77.7, which ranked 13th.
Cummings doesn’t dispute any of that. He disputes what it means.
“In 2025, he only scored a 77.7, which ranked 13th in the league, but he was in unideal circumstances, and last time he had a comparable season in 2022, he did bounce back to MVP-caliber play,” Cummings said.
Sit with that sentence, because it’s the whole argument. Jackson missed the final five games of 2022 with a sprained PCL. The players responded by ranking him 72nd on the 2023 Top 100. He then won MVP and took the No. 2 spot on the list two years running. Now they’ve put him at 69 off another injury-shortened year. Same input, same output, and the same correction likely coming.
The peak isn’t in dispute either. “Jackson is a two-time, almost three-time MVP who, when he’s on his game and fully healthy, he is truly transcendent,” Cummings said. “He’s the only active QB in the NFL to have a top 10 all-time PFN QB Impact score, in 2019, and his 91.7 grade in 2024 isn’t that far off.”
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Jackson led the NFL in QB Impact Scoring as recently as 2024.
Lamar Jackson’s Passing Growth Is the Part the Voters Are Missing
The durability question is real, and Cummings names it. What he rejects is the assumption underneath it, that Jackson is an athlete whose game evaporates the moment the legs go.
“The biggest question with Jackson is, how is his play style gonna age as he nears 30 years old, but he’s quietly developed into a high-level passer in addition to a high-level creator,” Cummings said. “He’s no longer overrelying on those creative gifts, but is instead a true two-phase master.”
The 2025 tape supports him even inside the bad year. Jackson finished fourth in the league in passer rating at 103.8, ahead of seven quarterbacks who made the Pro Bowl or were named alternates. On play-action, he posted the highest passer rating, the highest yards per attempt and the best completion percentage over expected of any qualified passer in football. A quarterback in decline does not lead the league in those categories while limping.
“Jackson is the prototype for the elite dual-threat QB at the NFL level,” Cummings said. “His best is the best in the league, and that’s why PFN is so high on him.”
He resets in 2026 under Jesse Minter, a 42-year-old first-time head coach hired in January to replace the fired John Harbaugh after 18 seasons. The players who voted Jackson 69th will be filling out ballots again next summer, and if the last cycle is any guide, most of them will be moving him back up 60 spots and pretending they never left.