Saints’ Adrian Peterson comes in at No. 98 on NFL Network’s Top 100

If you keep up with this sort of thing, then you’ll be interested to know that the New Orleans Saints are off to a good start in the NFL’s Top 100 Players of 2017. The recently acquired Adrian Peterson is No. 98 on this year’s list, tumbling all the way down from No. 5 in 2016.

The list, which has faced public scrutiny from players like NaVorro Bowman, has some very flawed methodology behind it. Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio was quick to point this out and express his disgust last season when Andrew Luck came in at No. 92.

The problem is that the list gets promoted to the public as a definitive ranking of the players by the players, when it’s definitely not. It’s an extremely unscientific poll that is slapped together on the fly, with no information ever released by the league regarding the number of players who submitted the top-20 ballots that become the top-100 list.

That same list put Drew Brees at No. 30 and Cameron Jordan at No. 99 last season as the lone Saints representation. Both are prime candidates to repeat this season, and plenty of arguments could be made for Michael Thomas and Larry Warford to appear on this list. Of course, we’ll just have to wait to see on this flawed ‘popularity’ contest.

Still, good for AP. Imagine if he didn’t sign with a team, would he have still appeared on the list? Probably not.