The Quarterback Hierarchy Shift: What Myles Garrett's Ascension Reveals About Modern NFL Evaluation

There's something happening in professional football right now that deserves our attention, something that goes beyond the simple mechanics of who threw for more yards or who sacked more quarterbacks in a given season. When you find yourself in a position where Myles Garrett, a defensive end who plays perhaps the most specialized position on the football field, vaults to the number one overall ranking in a comprehensive player evaluation, you're witnessing a fundamental recalibration of how we're thinking about quarterback play and defensive dominance in the modern NFL. This isn't just about statistics or Pro Bowl selections. This is about the evolving philosophy of what constitutes the most valuable player in professional football, and frankly, it's one of the most fascinating storylines heading into the 2026 evaluation cycle.

Let's start with the elephant in the room: Patrick Mahomes falling behind not one, not two, but three other quarterbacks in Prisco's latest top 100 rankings represents a seismic shift in how the quarterback position is being valued. Now, before anyone hyperventilates into a paper bag thinking Mahomes has suddenly become mediocre, let me be abundantly clear. We're talking about a player who has won championships, who has an MVP award, who has demonstrated an almost impossible ability to make plays outside the structure of organized football. The man throws from angles that would make geometry teachers weep. But here's what matters in this conversation: perception of value, particularly in the hierarchical rankings that shape how we discuss the sport, is as much about context and comparative excellence as it is about absolute production.

When you construct a top 100 list in professional football, you're making a statement about which players have the greatest combined impact on winning football. That's the implicit understanding. You're not ranking players by how entertaining they are or how much you personally like them. You're supposed to be answering the question: who moves the needle the most in determining whether his team wins or loses? That's a different calculation than it used to be, and I think that calculation is getting smarter, not dumber.

Consider what we've learned about quarterback evaluation over the last decade. We've seen the Kansas City Chiefs, with all their quarterback brilliance, struggle in certain playoff matchups because their defense couldn't slow down elite offensive schemes. We've watched teams with excellent quarterback play lose important games because they couldn't generate consistent pressure on opposing quarterbacks. We've observed that even the most talented quarterback is playing within a system that requires complementary excellence at almost every other position. The idea that quarterback play is monolithic and supreme has been significantly refined by the reality of modern professional football.

Myles Garrett represents something different. He represents what happens when you combine generational athletic tools, technical mastery of the pass rush, the kind of football intelligence that allows a player to diagnose plays before they develop, and an almost relentless commitment to improvement. At his combine, Garrett ran a 4.62 forty yard dash, which sounds pedestrian until you realize that measurement came on a man who weighs 272 pounds and has the wingspan of a pterodactyl. His vertical jump exceeded 40 inches. His broad jump would have been impressive for a wide receiver. These aren't just numbers on a piece of paper. They represent the physical foundation upon which he's built one of the most disruptive defensive seasons we've seen in recent memory.

What makes Garrett's ascension particularly meaningful is that it signals something important about quarterback evaluation moving forward. It's not that Mahomes and the other elite quarterbacks are suddenly diminished or that their value has genuinely evaporated. Rather, it's that there's a growing acknowledgment that quarterback excellence is becoming more distributed across the league than it was perhaps five or ten years ago. If you have five quarterbacks playing at an elite level, the marginal value of having the absolute best becomes less pronounced. It's economics applied to football: if everyone has a luxury car, the luxury car becomes less of a differentiator than it was when only three teams had them.

The three quarterbacks positioned ahead of Mahomes in Prisco's rankings presumably earned that placement through a combination of sustained excellence, playoff performance, and the eye test. I don't know the specifics of his rankings without seeing the list directly, but I can deduce that we're looking at quarterbacks who have demonstrated not just statistical superiority but the kind of intangible impact that shows up on game film. Maybe it's someone like Josh Allen, whose physical attributes have reached a point where he's functionally playing a different position than the traditional pocket passer. Maybe it's someone like Jared Goff, who quietly went about leading his team to unprecedented success with precision and intelligence. Maybe it's a younger quarterback who has demonstrated the kind of trajectory that suggests he's peaked at a higher level than we initially anticipated.

This recalibration matters because it affects how front offices think about resource allocation. If a consensus begins to form that quarterback supremacy is less decisive than previously believed, you start to see teams invest more heavily in edge rushers, defensive backs who can play coverage, and offensive linemen who can protect your investment. The draft capital that flows toward different positions shifts. The conversation about what constitutes a franchise-changing player evolves.

Now, let's talk about the snubs, because elite players being excluded from a top 100 list always generates legitimate conversation. When you're creating a ranked list of the one hundred best players in a league with nearly 1,700 rostered professionals, you're inevitably leaving out players who, in a different context or a different evaluation year, would have cracked the list. Some of those snubs might be controversial. Some might be perfectly defensible. What matters is understanding the reasoning, the philosophy behind those choices.

The question becomes whether the snubs represent a genuine oversight or a reflection of changed circumstances. Did a player who was previously ranked slip due to age, injury, or performance decline? Did the evaluator consciously choose to prioritize different qualities or different positions? Did the snubbed player simply get caught in a numbers game where there are more elite performers in his position group than there are available spots? These are the questions that separate informed criticism from reflexive defensiveness.

What I find most encouraging about the Garrett ascension and the quarterback reordering is that it suggests evaluation is becoming more nuanced, more willing to challenge conventional hierarchies, and more thoughtful about what truly drives winning in professional football. We can certainly debate the specific placements, the precise ranking of individual players, but the willingness to say that elite quarterback play alone doesn't guarantee supremacy over other forms of elite excellence is philosophically sound.

The 2026 season will provide us with crucial information about whether this recalibration of values translates to actual competitive reality. Does Garrett's dominance on a defensive line translate to his team advancing further in the playoffs? Do the elite quarterbacks outside of Mahomes's usual tier actually outperform him in meaningful ways? These are empirical questions that will either validate or undermine the ranking philosophy.

For now, what we know is this: the football world is thinking more carefully about quarterback evaluation, recognizing that while the position remains critically important, sustained excellence at other positions and in other phases of the game can be equally or perhaps even more impactful on winning football. That's not a slight to quarterbacks. That's a deepening of our understanding of how football actually works.