Pete Prisco’s 2026 Top 100 NFL Players list spotlights Myles Garrett at No. 1, with Colston Loveland bookending the ranking

CBS Sports senior NFL writer Pete Prisco released his Top 100 players for the 2026 NFL season, an annual exercise that attempts to measure who matters most on the field before the year starts. The list is led by Los Angeles Rams edge rusher Myles Garrett, and it is bookended by Chicago Bears tight end Colston Loveland, framing the ranking around star power at both ends of the spectrum.

Prisco’s ordering is structured around perceived player value for the upcoming season, and his customary “biggest risers and fallers” approach is meant to show where talent evaluation is shifting from one year to the next. The premise, as described in the release, is straightforward: identifying which players’ stock has moved meaningfully between the prior season and the 2026 outlook.

This kind of ranking does not function as official NFL evaluation or a league metric, but it can still serve as a public baseline for how top performers are viewed. For teams and players, the list reinforces the “center of gravity” stars executives, coaches, and scouts tend to build around, particularly at premium positions like edge rushing and tight end playmaking.

Because the release is framed as a riser-and-faller exercise, the most practical way to read it is through the lens of momentum and expectation. A player can be an elite talent and still move down if the broader projection changes due to roles, usage, or overall roster context. Likewise, a player can rise if he is expected to take on a larger share of responsibility, or if his performance profile becomes more central to the way his team plans to win.

Prisco’s top and bottom placements underscore that the list is not confined to one position group or one archetype. With Garrett leading the rankings as an edge rusher and Loveland closing it as a tight end, the boundaries of the evaluation stretch across different parts of the offense and defense that tend to determine game flow.

For fans, the next step is to watch how early 2026 practices and preseason plan-making align with these expectations. If teams’ first-string usage mirrors what the list implies about roles and matchup value, it can validate the ranking’s assumptions. If not, the offseason conversation that comes with a major yearly release becomes a starting point for debate rather than a conclusion.

Whether you treat Prisco’s Top 100 as a forecasting tool or a conversation starter, it provides a clear headline set for the coming season: Garrett at the top, Loveland at the end, and a middle tier built to reflect who gained ground, who lost ground, and who entered the discussion as the 2026 league picture comes into focus.