r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2021 Season - HUB POST

Welcome to the Hub Post for the r/NFL Top 100 Players of the 2021 Season!

METHODOLOGY

Five years ago we made a decision to focus on ranking just the previous season based on feedback. This year we continued that plan and only ranked players based on their performance during the 2021 regular season, since that is an equal baseline for all players. Post Season play was not considered in the rankings which is a continuation from last year per sub feedback. Additionally, despite the increase to a 17 game season the 10 game threshold to be considered was maintained. Here are some more details on the methodology and process for your understanding:

• Step 1: Getting the list of representatives. That’s what we did back in February. We started with over 100 rankers which led to 49 completed ranking submissions

• Step 2: We began nominating players who ranker’s believe should be considered that have played/started a minimum of 10 regular season games. Rankers from each of the represented fan bases submitted nominations for their own teams' players. This ended up being 209 players in total. This took about a week or so and was the only player pool for consideration.

• Step 3: The Grind. Once the pool was created, we utilized rankings threads about what tiers each player is in within their position group. Users were to break players into the following tiers for their peers to evaluate: Top 25, Top 50, Top 100, Top 101-125. This is done to give everyone an idea of where each ranker feels a player should be ranked based on 2021 regular season play only. This is an important distinction; if we were to rank players using past performance while projecting their standing heading into the 2022 season, the context would be completely different. Do you think a player who had a down year in 2021 will bounce back to the top tier player he’s been? I’d probably agree. However, that’s not what users were tasked with evaluating. Furthermore, we did this by positional grouping in individual threads; standard positional breakdown was QB, RB, WR, TE, OT, OG, OC, Interior Defensive Linemen (IDL), EDGE Rushers (EDGE), Off-Ball Linebackers (LB), Safety (SAF), CB. If most users have a player in Tier III (Top 100), for example, while someone has him unranked while another has him in Tier I, we’ll be able to find out why they are such outliers publicly. This took roughly 2 months, because we want everyone to have a thorough discussion of any questions they may have. It also helps individual rankers visualize where players should land on their own personal lists prior to submitting. It also helps prevent any funny business.

NOTE 1: There were no individual player threads submitted by users discussing the merits of players for or against their placement on the list. Users were also required to complete roughly 80% of these tiers prior to submitting their own lists for the overall average. There were breaks built into the process to allow everyone time to do the work and catch up (if necessary) but inactive users were removed periodically. Hence the difference in the total number of people from the start of the process and the total number of submitted sheets.

NOTE 2: No ranker was forced or encouraged to rank a certain number/limited number of positions on their list based on some arbitrary formula or idea. For example, NO ONE was told they need to limit the number of QBs on their Top 100 list. No ranker was directed to ignore any positional value; users were encouraged to factor positional value as they saw it into their rankings since it is a largely subjective measure.

• Step 4: After discussions were completed, the remaining users submitted their own, personal Top 125 list. Ranking 125 players was done to get a more accurate and fair average, especially towards the bottom end of the list where rankings tend to wildly fluctuate. Users were given over a week to complete their list.
  

NOTE 1: Rankings are submitted via individual Google Sheets and auto-compiled into a master list. We reviewed each list for outliers with the help of former rankers to catch individual ranks that are far off the players calculated mean, whether intentionally or accidentally. We calculated a mean rank then the standard deviation for each player. After that, we automatically flagged all ranks outside 1 standard deviation to ensure I caught user submission errors using built-in Google Sheets conditional formatting functions. We also flagged ranks 2 standard deviations or more from the mean to ensure rankers intent with their own list. This was done to ensure flags were identified with as little bias as possible. Conditional Formatting formulas were used to highlight cells to verify automatically to remove subjectivity. Users then had the opportunity to correct any submission errors found prior to finishing the list. We used 1 standard deviation in addition* to 2 since some players had large standard deviations and I wanted to be certain I caught actual mistakes. Rankers were only required to justify ranks 2 standard deviations from the players mean; the keyword here being justify as they weren’t directed to correct them. The entire spirit of this list is to take several individual rankings and find an average.

NOTE 2: All rankings will be made public. That may obviously bring some unwanted heat. But we don’t believe in skirting transparency for convenience sake. This was made known in the Call for Rankers and during the ranking process. This sub will only see the ranks for each post during the reveal. The final post - The Post Mortem - after all reveals will have a data dump with all ranks, individual sheets, and outlier ranking data made available.

• Step 5: With all rankings submitted and corrections made, if any, users lists were locked and their submissions finalized as their own. We then calculated an average rank as noted above. Unranked players were designated with a rank of 140 to tabulate the average for all nominated players. Additionally, one high rank and one low rank were removed from each player's tally to calculate the average rank. Players ranked 101-125 in the average will make the Honorable Mentions list while the remaining 1-100 will be the ranked players.

• Step 6: The Reveal… where we are now!

After a combined 6 years of ranking and running the show u/MikeTysonChicken has decided to retire from the process, handing the reigns off to myself and u/mattkud. Mike stayed on to show us how it’s done and provided invaluable advice and feedback, and we cannot thank him, nor any of the previous showrunners /u/Mister_Jay_Peg , u/Staple_Overlord , and u/skepticismissurvival , enough for building a platform that allows us to run this list as thoroughly and efficiently as we did. I’d also like to thank all the rankers, both the ones that finished the list and event those that didn’t. Being a year of transition in the showrunning process it might have been a bit turbulent, but they hung with us and had some great discussions and put out a reasonably good final list. Overall they did a great job (except for the ones that mixed up their Josh Allens, they did a slightly worse job.)

After three years of ranking myself, I can tell you this is a fun way of spending the offseason regardless of the praise or scorn you get for the list. You get to interact with people and fanbases that you might not otherwise pay attention to, and analyze and watch players who you know only in passing. Sometimes I say the final ranking isn’t the most important part, it’s about the journey of rewatching all these great players and having a newfound appreciation for them. I know I’ve become a more knowledgeable football fan since I first signed up to join the list, and I’m sure most rankers would say the same.

The rankers had a number of strategies for how they ranked the players and each was allowed to follow their own personal guidelines within the given parameters and as long as they were not simply using derivatives of other outside rankings. Basically, have your own positions and beliefs. As the reveal progresses, the rankers will have the ability to volunteer their player lists for the revealed numbers and/or where they ranked the listed players as they wish and you are free to engage with them.

Lastly, players will be revealed on the teams they played/finished the 2021 season with.

RANKING RELEASE SCHEDULE

The Honorable Mentions (125-101) will be released Tuesday, June 21st. The reveal will begin on Thursday, June 23rd with spots 100-91. From there we will release a list every Tuesday and Thursday . The Post Mortem will follow the week after after all reveal threads. There will be no follow-up or discussion threads for the third consecutive year.

If you want to follow along with the schedule here it is:

DATE	POST	LINK	DATE	POST	LINK
:-:	:-:	:-:	:-:	:-:	:-:
			June 16	Hub Post	THIS POST!
June 21	Honorable Mentions		June 23	100-91
June 28	90-81		June 30	80-71
July 5	70-61		July 7	60-51
July 12	50-41		July 14	40-31
July 19	30-21		July 21	20-11
July 26	10-6		July 28	5-1
August 2	Post Mortem

With all of this out of the way, I’m ready for some agreement and/or disagreeing, probably a dash of rage, with the rankings. Hopefully civil but heated discussions on why [insert player here] should/should not be ranked above/below [insert a different player] shall emerge and how it is an absolute travesty/surprise that [insert a totally different player here] is/isn’t included.

See ya Tuesday for the honorable mentions!

packmanwiscy & mattkud