Chicago Bears: Matt Forte Ranked in NFL Top 100 Players
The staff over at ESPN.com released an interesting piece on Tuesday that ranked the top 100 players in the entire NFL. The piece opens simply by stating, “This is not an MVP vote. The directions were simple: Rate players based on greatness. That’s what you see below: the top 100 players in the NFL in 2015, based on how good they are — not what positions they play or how many endorsements they have.”
The panel voting on this list consisted of “More than 70 voters. NFL analysts, reporters and statisticians — both from ESPN and outside ESPN — including former players and NFL front-office members.”
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Houston Texans defensive lineman J.J. Watt comes in at the top of the list with an overall rating of 98.87. Watt was followed closely by Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers who came in with a score of 98.34. Tom Brady (95.14), Ndamukong Suh (94.56) and Rob Gronkowski (94.51) rounded out the top five.
Coming in as the 59th ranked player with an overall rating of 83.21 is Chicago Bears running back Matt Forte. He was the Bears’ lone representative on the list. Here is what the ESPN piece had to say about Forte:
"Here’s a good trivia question: Over the past seven seasons, which player has led the NFL in yards from scrimmage? OK, so maybe we already gave it away, but remarkably, no player has more than Forte’s 11,431 combined rushing and receiving yards over that span. Good but not incredible rushing totals obscure facts like the 102 catches Forte had in 2014, more than every NFL player not named Julio Jones, Demaryius Thomas or Antonio Brown — and a single-season record for RBs. “So smooth, with deceptive speed and quickness,” said one voter. Forte’s whole career has been deceptive."
Forte is great, and we all know this. He will go down as being one of the most productive offensive players in the history of the Chicago Bears’ franchise. His inclusion on this list is well deserving. However, it is not great to see that he is the only member of the Bears being recognized.
Wide receiver Alshon Jeffery and offensive lineman Kyle Long could have been (and probably were) considered for the end of this list, but Forte being the lone representative from the team just goes to show how far behind the Bears are in a talent perspective around the league.
Lists like this do not mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but when your team only has one representative, that is not a good thing.
We all know that the Bears are likely in a rebuilding era of their franchise. There will be brighter days ahead, but light at the end of the tunnel is still dim. A list like this is not promising in hoping that light gets brighter anytime soon.
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