Five Vikings made the cut on a new ranking of the top 100 most valuable players of the 2023 NFL season, which was put together by ESPN’s Seth Walder. First, here’s some context on how he put the list together: This is a purely descriptive exercise.
All that matters is which players generated the most value in the regular season. The ballot represents my opinion, which is usually heavily influenced by quantitative evidence, such as pass block win rates and our Receiver Tracking Metrics.
I factor in All-Pro teams and qualitative information such as Pro Football Focus grades, though, too. I also shared versions of the list with trusted colleagues and NFL team staffers to get feedback, which I consider quite valuable. To reconcile different positions, I considered how much value a player created over an average starter at his position. This means quarterbacks will dominate the top of the list because they play the position with the most variance, but also that there could be only 16 or so at most in the top 100. Another example is the league’s eighth-best offensive tackle is ranked ahead of the third-best running back, because running back value is much more tightly clustered than the value of tackles
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