Drew Brees, Michael Thomas among Touchdown Wire’s Top-20 players

After running tape and stats for months, compiling 14 different lists of the top players at every position, and sorting through which of THOSE players are most valuable, we have come to this.

Here are my top 100 NFL players heading into the 2019 season. https://t.co/Njg1JjJv5g

— Doug Farrar (@NFL_DougFarrar) July 17, 2019

A big project was undertaken by Doug Farrar over at Touchdown Wire, who has been compiling top-11 lists for every position group in the NFL. He capped off the endeavor by dropping his his ranking of the top-100 players ahead of the 2019 season, regardless of position.

New Orleans was represented with six players on his breakdown. Two of them, wide receiver Michael Thomas and quarterback Drew Brees, cracked the top-20. Here’s what Farrar had to say about each of the two Saints at the top:

13. Michael Thomas, WR, New Orleans Saints

By: Doug Farrar, Touchdown Wire

You knew that Thomas had the talent to succeed in a high-volume passing offense like the one Sean Payton brilliantly designed and Drew Brees runs to perfection in New Orleans, but what the Ohio State alum has brought to the equation has transformed the Saints’ passing game as much as anybody Brees has thrown to since he showed up in 2006. Brees has had a ton of talented targets, and he’s elevated every one of them, but he’s never had anybody with Thomas’ ridiculous combination of consistency, efficiency and nose for the big play. Thomas led the NFL in 2018 with 125 catches, amassing 1,405 yards and nine touchdowns, and over his three-year career, he’s developed his skill set to the point where he’s just about impossible to cover on a snap-to-snap basis.

Thomas’ get-up speed is absolutely ridiculous — God help you if you leave him a hole in zone coverage — and he has the instincts to beat tighter coverage concepts with quick cuts and leans into the open field. Add in his physical nature and contested catch ability, and it wouldn’t be surprising if Thomas was at the top of a list like this in a year or two.

3. Drew Brees, QB, New Orleans Saints

By: Doug Farrar, Touchdown Wire

As is the case with Tom Brady, people have been wanting to throw dirt on the idea of Peak Brees for a few years now. Brees will turn 41 in January, and at this point in his career, he seems bound and determined to pick away at every naysaying argument at a Hall of Fame level. In 2018, he completed an absolutely insane 74.4% of his passes, breaking his own NFL record from 2017 by 2.4 percentage points. In fact, Brees has four of the top five completion percentage seasons in NFL history, and the two best seasons happened in the last two years.

Given the narrative that his deep arm is shot, you might assume that Brees is inflating these numbers with nothing but dink-and-dunk throws. Not really. Last season, he completed 31 of 64 passes of 20 or more air yards for 977 yards, and those numbers may have been even more impressive were it not for a mysterious drop in effectivenessthat beleaguered him late in the season. We’ll see if that moves into 2019, but if it doesn’t, it’s clear that Brees is anything but washed up.

Listed as a generous 6 feet, Brees is able to transcend any height concerns in and out of the pocket because he’s so aware of his line splits, and how the timing of blocking openings corresponds to the timings of his receivers’ routes. He understands and reads defenses at a scientific level, and when he’s healthy and mechanically sound, he can rip those defenses apart with timing throws to every area of the field.