The NFL's best players at every position: Barnwell picks a 50 man All Pro Team

Happy New Year! To start off 2024, I'm taking a look back at the best players from the , revealing my first and second team All Pro selections. After working through a season of numbers, watching players on film and talking to people in and around the league about what they've seen, I've done my best to pick the top guys at every position. In many ways, it has been a strange season, and that has impacted this roster. I typically knock down a peg players who miss a handful of games because they didn't offer as much as those who have been on the field all season, but this season, many of the top candidates have either missed some time or come in and out of contests while battling injuries. I let availability serve as a tiebreaker on some close races, but I had to be more open minded toward players with 13 or 14 games as viable candidates. This is my roster, and so I build it in a slightly different way than other All Pro ballots to try to align with real football. In a league in which teams use 11 personnel (one running back, one tight end) more often than any other personnel grouping, my teams have three wide receivers and no fullback. I list offensive linemen by individual position, so we have best left tackle and right tackle as opposed to best offensive tackles. And instead of cheating by listing some edge rushers as linebackers and others as defensive ends, I'm lumping guys such as and in with and , since they essentially play the same role on the edge. That's going to lead to fun consequences later. I'll detail my first team All Pro decision before naming my second teamers. You won't be surprised to hear that the top teams are well represented: You'll find four Ravens, 49ers and Cowboys as first team All Pros, making up half of the 24 man roster. That includes the quarterback, who might have Sunday with his best game of the season: My season ending awards column is coming next week, and there will be a heavy focus on the various quarterbacks battling for MVP. I don't think the Ravens will play Jackson in Week 18 since they , so he's likely to be standing on this performance as we end the regular season. It was a good way to go out. Facing a Dolphins team whose tormented the Ravens, Jackson & Co. for the first round bye. Jackson was close to perfect as a passer, going 18 of 21 for 321 yards with five touchdowns. It was his first five passing touchdown performance since his in 2019. Two of his three incompletions were drops, including what should have been a 75 yard touchdown pass to . Jackson's case isn't as strong as it was in 2019, when he threw 36 touchdown passes, ran for 1,206 yards and added seven more scores on the ground. The five touchdown day got him to 24 passing scores on the season. He has nearly 200 more rushing yards than any other quarterback, but he's going to finish with 821 yards and five rushing scores this season. He leads all quarterbacks in rush yards over expectation (RYOE), but 10 other quarterbacks have generated more expected points added (EPA) on the ground. At the same time, I believe Jackson is a better passer than the guy we saw in 2019. We've seen the Ravens upgrade their passing game by swapping out coordinator Greg Roman for Todd Monken while importing , and at wide receiver, but Jackson looks more confident in the pocket. He's averaging more yards per attempt from there than anyone in the league besides the three Shanahan system quarterbacks ( , and ). He also has continued to pick teams apart in the midrange (from 11 to 20 yards downfield), taking advantage of defenses that are concerned about his legs and want to get an extra safety into the run fit. He leads the league in QBR in the intermediate range (95.9). The only quarterback who averaged more yards per attempt on those throws was Purdy, but Purdy threw six interceptions in that zone. Jackson didn't turn over the ball once on those throws. The reality is also that the competition isn't as stiff this season as it most years. Purdy and Tagovailoa both get knocked for benefiting from incredible playmakers and flamed out against the Ravens in December. 's incredible two month stretch of play has given way to three inconsistent performances over the past three weeks. has thrown 14 interceptions, and the Eagles have fallen apart after Thanksgiving. turned the ball over too often while the Bills were struggling in October and November. ' wide receivers can't catch. It was a down season for quarterbacks, but by the end of it, Jackson has outlasted his competition. After having him as , he'll likely be there when I flip my season long ballot over next week. , There's not really much competition for McCaffrey, whose regular season is likely over after he suffered a calf injury while the 49ers on Sunday. With one week to go, his 2,023 yards from scrimmage put him more than 500 yards ahead of any other back. He's tied for the league lead in touchdowns (21) with Miami's , who wasn't able to go in Week 17 because of . The most dramatic number for McCaffrey comes from his ability to generate first downs. He has moved the chains 114 times this season. No other back has picked up more than 71 first downs through 16 games. Only 10 backs have racked up more first downs in a season since the turn of the century, and just two have done so since 2010. McCaffrey has a lead of more than 300 rushing yards on second placed , which is impressive for a back who is usually thought of as more of a hybrid player than a traditional pure runner. While the 49ers have excellent run blocking and a genius playcaller, McCaffrey is also still able to push through contact, as he has averaged 2.1 yards after first contact as a runner, which ranks seventh best in the league. His 349 rush yards over expectation (RYOE) are nearly 100 more than those of second placed ; while McCaffrey has earned many more carries than the Dolphins standout, his ability to stay on the field all season has been a huge boon to his value and the San Francisco offense. , While Hill's march toward a has been waylaid by injuries that have and limited his explosiveness, we're still looking at a special season from the league's most productive wideout. Hill has averaged 4.1 yards per route run, which might be unprecedented in NFL history. ESPN has yards per route run data running back through 2007, and the only other player to top 3.4 over a full season before Hill this season was , who was at 3.9 in 2008. We obviously don't have data on what Jerry Rice and others produced at their peak, but when you think about all the great receivers we've seen over the past 17 seasons and how far Hill is ahead of the pack, we're talking about a true outlier. What makes this even more impressive is that Hill gobbles up volume. He has been targeted on 37.4% of his routes this season, which is the highest rate for any player with at least 200 routes run in a season since 2007. Even with , Achane and Mostert in the mix, he is both earning targets and generating efficiency at historic rates. This is like a peak season for a future Hall of Famer, even if it doesn't end with 2,000 yards. , Seeing Lamb develop an almost preternatural connection with as the season has gone along has been wildly entertaining. Through five games, Lamb had just one game with more than 80 receiving yards; he was off to a solid start, but he wasn't on the radar as a top five wideout. From Week 6 onward, Lamb comfortably leads the league in catches (95) and receiving yards (1,293), more than 200 yards ahead of any other player. is the only wideout with more touchdowns over that time frame. As we saw , he's also the wideout Prescott turns to when the quarterback needs to move the chains: Lamb's 58 first downs over that stretch also lead all receivers. Since 2000, only seven receivers have averaged more receiving yards per game from Week 6 on than Lamb. The only one who wasn't a first team All Pro was in 2013. Lamb is an easy pick here; there's a significant drop off between Hill and Lamb and the rest of the league's wideouts this season. , 49ers Brown is in what amounts to a dead heat with Nacua, as the two players have virtually identical numbers across the board. I'll lean ever so slightly toward Brown for his physicality and ability to win on 50/50 balls; I wouldn't fault anyone for preferring Nacua's work after the catch. Brown has two more touchdown passes than his counterpart, and Nacua has eight drops to just three from his Eagles counterpart. Nobody is having a great end to the season in Philadelphia, but Brown's electrifying was enough to earn him a spot here. He became the first player since the AFL NFL merger to rack up 125 or more receiving yards in six consecutive games. With one game left to go, he ranks third in receiving yards and sixth in yards per route run. , Kittle has been the league's best blocking tight end for a number of years, but with taking a step backward and missing the final seven games of the season with an , the 49ers star has been the best receiving tight end in football, too. Kittle leads all tight ends in receiving yards (1,020), yards per route run (2.5) and average yards after catch (7.4). Get your favorite live sports, stories and originals with ESPN+, Disney+ and Hulu. and start streaming something for everyone today! Kittle has done that while accruing 90 targets. While I give some credence to players who are able to command huge target shares, he has been remarkably efficient when looks his way. He is averaging 11.3 yards per target. No other tight end is within 3 yards of Kittle's figure, and the only receiver who has averaged more yards per target this season is Aiyuk, Kittle's teammate. , Despite turning 35 before the season, Williams should be something close to a unanimous pick as the best left tackle in football. His ability to hold up on an island against every pass rusher he faces and punish opposing defensive linemen on the run as part of San Francisco's expansive ground game is simply unduplicated. He did and with injuries, but this is a season in which virtually every significant lineman has missed a game or two. Williams ranks No. 1 in , and if you want to see his impact on the 49ers offense, just take a look at what happened when an ankle injury caused him to miss those two games in midseason. A 49ers offense that has averaged 30.5 points per game with him in the lineup scored 17 points in back to back losses to the and . has a passer rating of 118.0 with Williams on the field, but that drops to 89.0 without Williams. , This has been another classic Johnson season he with an ankle injury and is otherwise lights out while protecting the right side for an Eagles quarterback. You can count the moments in which he looked something less than dominant on your fingers: a pressure by forcing Jalen Hurts to scramble in the , an excellent rush splitting the guard and tackle by in , a nice move by then Commanders edge rusher in pop up as rare exceptions to the rule. , Tim Hasselbeck explains why the Philadelphia Eagles have lost four of their last five games and how they will fare going on the road in the playoffs. This is ESPN's seventh season of pass block and . Across those seven seasons, no guard has posted a higher pass block win rate than Thuney, whose 99.3% mark beats out the previous record of 98.9%. Of course, the previous record holder won't be too upset: it was Thuney, who hit that mark for the Chiefs last season. He went 426 3 on pass block duels this season, per ESPN's model. ' propensity for improvisation asks a lot of his pass blockers, but Thuney has been able to keep his quarterback upright, even given the disappointing play from at left tackle. Thuney's physicality also plays a key role for the Chiefs when they do commit to running the football; coach Andy Reid will need Thuney and fellow interior standouts and to excel on the ground to give his team an offensive burst in the postseason. If you watched Sunday's , you saw Thuney springing for a pair of big early runs. , Offensive linemen can have a habit of receiving accolades well past their peak, if only because there's no common measure we can easily rely upon to judge their performance. Ask around the league and talk to people who are watching linemen each week, however, and you'll hear as many raves about the 33 year old Martin now as you did five years ago. Enough of the physical tools that allowed him to play left tackle in a pinch are still around, and he has seen everything opposing defenders can throw at him by now. Some college tackles who move inside at the NFL level can struggle with their strength or ability to hold off bigger defenders; first round pick is dealing with that a little bit right now for Tennessee. Martin was one of the conversions who adapted immediately. He ranks fourth in run block win rate among guards this season. It still seems impossible that the Cowboys picking the future Hall of Famer or quarterback in the . , You probably aren't surprised, are you? Despite for multiple offseasons and apparently spending his time after the Super Bowl filming dozens of commercials, the beloved Eagles center continues to look like he's closer to 26 than 36. Philadelphia still relies heavily on Kelce's quickness as a pulling lineman, surely asking more out of him on the move than any other center in the league. Take a look at that won the Eagles their game ; it's Kelce kicking out to the edge and obliterating to set up a running lane for . Simulate your own scenarios and check the latest playoff picture. • • | | Of course, as we try to parse out the credit for why the Eagles thrive with their version of the so much more often than their counterparts, it seems fair to give a significant portion of the credit to Hurts and some portion of it to Kelce, who consistently seems to out leverage his opponents and create a lane for his star quarterback. Outside of a penalty for against , it has been another banner year for the five time All Pro. , Here's the toughest competition on the list. I count nine players who could justifiably earn first team All Pro consideration on the edge, and that doesn't even include , who got off to a slow start before turning things on. has looked like a superstar since . was having his best season before suffering what is in garbage time against the Ravens on Sunday. has 16 sacks and can't sniff my top four. It's brutal. Let me start with the guy who has to be on here. Watt is tied for the league lead in sacks with , with both AFC North players standing on 17 with a game to go. He has stuffed the stat sheet in all kinds of ways: He has four forced fumbles, three fumble recoveries, an interception, six pass breakups and a touchdown. Big plays from Watt helped seal narrow victories for his team over the , and . The Steelers aren't in the playoff picture without Watt on the field. , By virtually every underlying pass rush metric sacks, Parsons is the NFL's best edge rusher. His 36.7% pass rush win rate is the best mark on the edge by more than six points. , who if not for a that has slowed him down over the previous six games, is second at 30.5%. Nobody else is up over 26%. , in third at 25.9%, is closer to 30th place than he is to Parsons in first. ESPN's analysis has Parsons with 69 initial pressures, placing him two ahead of for the league lead. NFL Next Gen Stats has Parsons pressuring opposing quarterbacks on 22% of dropbacks, the highest rate for a player with at least 200 pass rush attempts this season. He has also done that while rushing the passer just 412 times, a significantly smaller total when compared to Watt (470), (505) and Crosby (546). His average pressure comes after just 2.17 seconds; the only other players below 2.2 seconds are teammates and , who have benefited from Parsons' gravity this season. Parsons has "only" 13 sacks and one forced fumble, relatively modest figures when you compare them to Hendrickson's and Mack's. Parsons gets triple teamed more often than any other player. He has been criticized for his run defense in key moments, although he still ranks as a top 20 defender by run stop win rate, and I suspect the Cowboys are encouraging him to freelance a bit as part of their defense. Other players have taken down quarterbacks more often, but I don't think anybody has been more impactful on a snap by snap basis. I would love to list five or six edge rushers here, but I have to limit myself to two. , The first of several Ravens on the defensive side of the ball here, Madubuike's breakout season as an interior pass rusher has been remarkable. While the 26 year old flashed at times and looked to be a solid starting tackle over the previous couple of seasons, I'm not sure anybody was expecting him to be the league's most physically imposing interior rusher in 2023. Well, he is. Watch the Ravens every week and you'll see Madubuike living in the backfield, simply overpowering opposing guards and forcing wild scrambles and throwaways from opposing quarterbacks. While Ravens coordinator Mike Macdonald relies on zone pressures to create confusion on the edges of protection schemes, Madubuike simply overwhelms them from the inside out. Get exclusive access to thousands of premium articles a year from top writers. • • • A quiet game in Week 16 meant that Madubuike's streak of games with at least a half sack ended after 11 contests, bringing him one game short of the league record. The fourth year player started a new one with a sack on Sunday. With 13 sacks, 32 knockdowns, 12 tackles for loss and the league's seventh highest pressure rate for defensive tackles, it has been one hell of a contract year for a new star on the interior. , While Jones in a contract dispute, he has been essential ever since for the Chiefs. This isn't his most productive season by sacks or quarterback knockdowns, but ESPN's data is particularly impressed by what he did this season. Jones ranks fifth in pass block win rate on the interior despite being double teamed on nearly 73% of his interior rushes, which is the highest rate for any defensive tackle. While Jones finished with 9.5 sacks, the work he did for his teammates gets the free agent to be on this list. ESPN's sacks created metric attempts to measure how many times a pass rusher produced a sack for his team, whether that takedown was actually finished off by the player himself or by a teammate. Jones created a league high 18.5 sacks, helping edge defenders and post career high sack totals. Jones is the anchor for one of the league's best defenses. , No off ball linebacker erases more space and takes away the middle of the field better than Warner. While linebackers a few generations ago would take away that space with the threat of huge hits, he eliminates throws between the numbers with his speed and ability to read the intentions of quarterbacks. For the second season in a row, he has allowed a passer rating in coverage. Warner doesn't need to fill up the stat sheet to make a difference, but he's having a career year. He has intercepted four passes, which is a career high. He has added 2.5 sacks and five knockdowns as a pass rusher, along with six tackles for loss. Alongside , Warner is part of the league's best one two punch at linebacker. , I had in this spot before Week 17, but Smith pushed ahead of the former in Jacksonville with a game changing performance on Sunday. Smith made a spectacular one handed catch , then helped create a second pick by squeezing the window for a throw over the middle of the field. Smith has taken a sloppy Baltimore team and turned it into a much more reliable defense. When the Ravens blew a 28 7 lead to the Dolphins last season, it was by virtue of allowing 215 yards after catch, the sixth most for any team in a game in the entire season. On Sunday, Smith & Co. limited what had been the league's third best YAC offense to 115 yards after catch. The Ravens have allowed the second fewest yards after catch per reception of any team this season. Much of that falls on Smith, who has made the players around him better after joining the organization via in 2022. , Sneed, a fourth round pick in 2020, emerged as a fun player around the line of scrimmage who would make a disproportionate number of plays in the backfield for a cornerback. After giving him a few games shadowing No. 1 wideouts last season, though, coordinator Steve Spagnuolo has gone all in and given Sneed No. 1 duties for most of the season. Sneed has everyone from Minnesota's to Philadelphia's in the process. The great tracks CBs that shadow and L'Jarius Sneed has done so for 9 straight games. The results for those WRs: AJ Brown: 1 catch, 8 yards Tyreek Hill: 8 catches, 62 yards Courtland Sutton: 2 catches, 29 yards, 1 TD Josh Palmer: 5 catches, 133 yards Jerry... While Sneed hasn't made as many plays on the football as he has in previous seasons, emerging as a top flight cover corner has been a remarkable developmental effort for Spagnuolo. And with the Chiefs blitzing at the fourth highest rate in football, they've needed Sneed to win on an island on a regular basis. He has allowed a 53.1 passer rating as the nearest defender in coverage this season, according to NFL Next Gen Stats, a remarkable figure given the quality of opposition he has faced. While he has committed a league high eight pass interference penalties this season, the pros with his performances far outweigh the cons. , Nobody better encapsulates the ups and downs of the Browns over the past two seasons. In 2022, Ward failed to live up to expectations and made too many mistakes. This season, he has been locked in and seemed to . With Ward sticking on the left side of the defense, the Browns have allowed a 46.4 QBR on throws to the right side of the offense, the best mark for any team. According to the numbers at Pro Football Reference, Ward has turned opposing quarterbacks into sub replacement passers when they throw in his direction. He has allowed a , the best mark among regular starters this season. He ranks fourth among corners in passer rating allowed; the guys ahead of him are (who would be on this list if he hadn't missed half the season), (Ward's excellent teammate) and , who just narrowly ended up on my second team. , Eight interceptions and speak for themselves, right? Bland can be the very opposite of his name and serve as a very combustible force for the Cowboys, but no player can say he has generated more points for their defense than the second year corner. Bland has racked up 35.6 expected points added (EPA) as the nearest defender in coverage this season, the top figure for any defensive player in the league. He has roughly been as impactful for the Cowboys as a coverage defender as has been as a quarterback for the Rams, and Stafford gets a lot more chances to play with the football than his counterpart. , Remember when the Ravens were for a guy who ran a 4.59 second 40 yard dash after the Eagles for defensive tackle ? Well, Hamilton doesn't play like a guy who runs a 4.59. He has become the ultimate chess piece for coordinator Mike Macdonald, starring as a safety, slot cornerback and off ball linebacker this season. He has even taken a handful of snaps as an edge rusher, where he has alternately gone after the quarterback and dropped into throwing lanes to take advantage of confused opposing signal callers. • • • • • | Hamilton has been the league's best coverage safety. By the numbers at , he has allowed an NFL best 38.4 passer rating across 63 targets in coverage, with opposing quarterbacks averaging just 2.6 yards per target in his direction. The NFL Next Gen Stats nearest defender model has him generating 32.4 EPA for the Ravens, which is the top mark for any safety this season and third among all defenders behind Bland and Sneed. Get Hamilton near the line of scrimmage and he's also a problem. He has three sacks and 15 quarterback pressures on 35 pass rush snaps; while that's not a huge sample, nobody with more pass rushing opportunities has gotten after the quarterback more often. He's the first player with both 10 or more tackles for loss and pass knockdowns in a season since in 2015. With the Ravens dealing with injuries at cornerback before and throughout the season, his adaptability has been essential for one of the league's best defenses. While he missed Sunday's win over the Dolphins, he should be back ruining opposing offensive game plans in the postseason. , Would the Falcons even be in the playoff race without Bates? In , he intercepted and forced a fumble to set up 17 points in a 24 10 victory over the Panthers. His of likely resulted in the margin of victory in a . He added on a deep shot in a . In all, he has intercepted six passes and forced three fumbles this season. Despite playing most of the time in center field, Bates has more stuffs than any safety besides Houston's . Bates' presence has helped flip the coverage success rates of both his new team and his old one. When the Falcons didn't get pressure last season, they ranked 27th in QBR allowed. That's up to 10th this season. And while the Bengals ranked 10th in QBR allowed without pressure a year ago, they've dropped to 29th without him. He might not single handedly be responsible for those changes, but the Falcons are in a much better place with him in their lineup. , Aubrey is now 35 for 35 on field goal attempts this season after hitting two in over the Lions. It's hard to argue with the first year player's success, though he has missed three extra points. Aubrey has now hit nine attempts from 50 yards and beyond; over the past decade, the only other kicker to have a season with at least nine successes and no misses from 50 plus yards out is in 2016. , According to the methodology from , there's a big four atop the punting leaderboard this season. One of those players is Tennessee's , who is out for the . (Dallas) and (San Francisco) are in the top three, but their offenses are too dominant; they rank among the league's five least used regular punters. • | | • | | | • | • | | | The one remaining player is Cole, who is averaging 50.0 yards per punt, which is the league's fourth best gross figure. His 44.8 net yards per punt are one tenth of a yard behind Anger, but Cole has punted 71 times to Anger's 44 attempts, giving the Raiders standout the ability to rack up considerable value as the season progresses. Cole narrowly beats out Anger to finish up our All Pro team. , As teams have moved more toward specialized kick and punt returners, it's tougher for the league's top return men to stand out from the pack over a 10 or 20 return sample. One of the few exceptions this season has been Shaheed, who has averaged more than 21 yards per kickoff return and turned 23 punt returns into 321 yards and a touchdown. ,