Rams stunned as team fails to put 1 player among NFL top 50 player rankings

The Los Angeles Rams have one of the most improving and electrifying teams in the NFL. But as far as NFL starts? Not so much. At least that is the conclusion if you've tracked Rams players in the latest NFL Spin Zone's ranking of the Top 100 NFL players. You see, not one Rams player cracked the Top 50 in that list. Is it any consolation to find that some Rams players made the bottom 50 in those rankings? No.

So who does appear on the Top 100 ranking list?

• 54 - OLB Jared Verse
• 56 - WR Puka Nacua

That's it. No RG Kevin Dotson. No DL Braden Fiske or Kobie Turner. No RB Kyren Williams. No WR Davante Adams. Not even QB Matthew Stafford. There are plenty of Green Bay Packers, San Francisco 49ers, Baltimore Ravens, and even Tampa Bay Buccaneers players on the list. But any list that projects 49ers RB Christian McCaffrey as the 40th-ranked player in the NFL opens itself up to skepticism.

How can you omit Rams DT Kobie Turner, a guy who has put up 17.0 quarterback sacks in two seasons, despite drawing more double teams than any other interior defensive lineman in the NFL? How could DROY Jared Verse only come in at 54? How could the NFL's All-Time Rookie Receiving Record holder, Puka Nacua, come in no better than 56? By rights, if Nacua had played a 17-game season in 2024, he would have cleared over 1500 receiving yards.

So NFL ranking lists can project what an oft-injured Christian McCaffrey might do if he stays healthy in 2025, but cannot manage to do so with WR Puka Nacua?

Make it make sense.

I understand that offseason rankings are more about water cooler conversations and disputes than objectively analyzing the full rosters of 32 NFL teams. But of the 1696 players who will make the 2025 NFL active rosters, only 5.9 percent qualify as a Top 100 player. The Rams have 53 players who should qualify, but only two have done so.

If Rams veteran RG Kevin Dotson can be named the eighth-best guard in Pro Football Focus Rankings, he ought to clear a Top 100 list of all NFL players.

Veteran QB Matthew Stafford was named as one of PFF's top 10 late-career veterans who are still playing at a high level. If Philadelphia Eagles LT Lane Johnson, San Francisco 49ers LT Trent Williams, Tampa Bay Buccaneers WR Mike Evans, and Washington Commanders ILB Bobby Wagner can springboard from that list to a Top-100 ranking, why omit Matthew Stafford?

I'm not here to say that every player on the Rams roster is a superstar. Nor are they All-Pros, or even Pro Bowlers. But in a ranking with so many too-close-to-call ties, how is it that every Rams player in contention for a Top 100 ranking loses out?

We all have our biases, and it's natural to have them. We can only know what we have experienced, either directly by first-hand account, or indirectly, by reading and researching. The list is not objective, and many of the names are arguably far off the mark.

But these are the dog days of summer. The Rams do not regroup for training camp for nearly a month. I hate to say it, but this is as it gets sometimes. As always, thanks for reading.

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