People love to say that finding young talent in the NFL is hard. Maybe that was true at one point, but it doesn’t really feel that way anymore.

Look around the league, and you’ll find young players already making All-Pro teams and changing the way their teams build around them. The next wave isn’t waiting their turn. A lot of these players are already here.

That’s what makes The Athletic’s ranking of the NFL’s top players 25 and under so interesting. More than 20 coaches, scouts, executives, and other NFL decision-makers were asked to sort through the league’s best young talent, and the results made one thing pretty clear: there’s plenty of it to go around.

Some of these players are already at the top of their position.

The League Still Starts In The Trenches

Penei Sewell is probably the least flashy answer you could give to a question about the NFL’s best young star.

Every offseason, the league talks about protecting quarterbacks and building from the inside out. Then the games start, and everyone’s attention shifts to whoever is throwing it or catching it.

But Sewell gave them plenty of reasons to pay attention. He earned first-team All-Pro honors for the third straight season in 2025 and made his fourth consecutive Pro Bowl. His 95.2 overall PFF grade led every offensive lineman, and his 96.8 run-blocking grade was comfortably the best at his position.

He wasn’t just tossing people around in the running game, either. Sewell allowed pressure on only 3.3% of Detroit’s passing plays, the best of his career and the fifth-best among all offensive tackles.

That’s the job, basically. When the Lions run behind him, he can move a defensive lineman wherever he wants. When they pull him or get him into space, he can still make the block. And when Jared Goff drops back, Sewell usually keeps the pocket clean.

There aren’t many players who can change what an offense feels comfortable calling without ever touching the ball. Sewell's one of them.

Detroit's asking even more of him this season by moving him from right tackle to the left side after releasing Taylor Decker. There will be an adjustment, and nobody's pretending Sewell's perfect in pass protection. But the expectation around the league is that his power and athleticism will carry over.

One veteran defensive coach called him the most complete player at the position because of his power, physicality, and intelligence. An NFC executive described him in a more entertaining way, pointing to all the “attitude plays” Sewell puts on film every week.

That matters. Sewell doesn’t just get through his snaps. He can make the line of scrimmage feel like his property.

Jalen Carter landing at No. 2 right behind him sends the same message from the defensive side.

His 2025 season wasn’t the strongest argument for the second spot on paper. Injuries limited him to 11 games, his three sacks were a career low, and his 7.7 percent pressure rate dropped from where it had been during his first two seasons.

The Eagles still gave him a four-year, $152 million extension that includes $106 million guaranteed and can reach $160 million. That made Carter the highest-paid defensive tackle in NFL history.

Pressure from the middle ruins an offense differently than pressure off the edge. A quarterback can sometimes step up to avoid an outside rusher. He can’t step up when Carter's already driven a guard into his lap.

That pressure also gets there quickly. An offense can slide protection toward an elite edge rusher, but doubling a defensive tackle creates problems somewhere else along the front. Carter already has 83 pass-rush wins since entering the league, tied for seventh among interior defenders, and clearly people in the NFL still think he has another level to reach.

Brock Bowers Found A Loophole In Positional Value

Bowers at No. 3 is where this ranking gets really interesting.

Tight end usually isn’t treated like one of the NFL’s premium positions. George Kittle's currently the highest-paid player at the position at $19.1 million per year. Receivers just saw Jaxon Smith-Njigba get a new contract that averages more than $42 million a year.

That tells you how the league generally values the two positions. A top receiver is worth more than twice as much as the highest-paid tight end.

And yet, the evaluators still put Bowers ahead of every young receiver in football.

That’s not as strange as it sounds.

Bowers is listed as a tight end, but he doesn’t play the position in the traditional way. The Raiders can line him up next to the tackle, put him in the slot, or even line him up on the outside.

That creates a problem for defenses because they have to decide what Bowers really is.

A linebacker probably can’t stay with him. A defensive back might be able to cover him, but now that defender has to deal with Bowers’ size and strength. If the defense brings in extra defensive backs, they have less help against the run. If they stay in their base package, Bowers gets the matchup Las Vegas wanted.

That’s the trick. He creates mismatch problems no matter where he's at.

Bowers showed that right away as a rookie. His 112 catches set an NFL rookie record, and his 1,194 receiving yards broke Mike Ditka’s 63-year-old record for a first-year tight end. He led all tight ends in receptions, receiving yards, and yards after the catch.

A knee injury limited him to 12 games in his second season, but he still caught 64 passes for 680 yards and set a career high with seven touchdowns.

The missed time clearly didn’t change how the league sees him.

Skill Guys Had to Wait In Line

Five of the top seven players were defensive players. The names you hear most on the broadcast didn’t show up until the bottom half of the top 10.

Nacua was the first receiver at No. 8 after leading the NFL with 129 receptions and finishing second with 1,715 yards in 2025. He added 10 touchdowns and tied Odell Beckham Jr. and Justin Jefferson as the fastest players to reach 4,000 career receiving yards.

Smith-Njigba didn’t appear until No. 15, even after winning Offensive Player of the Year, leading the league with 1,793 receiving yards, and helping Seattle win the Super Bowl.

That’s not a knock on either player. They were two of the most dominant offensive players in football last season.

It just shows that the people making these decisions aren’t treating big numbers like the end of the conversation. Receivers can take over a game, but they still need a quarterback to get them the ball, an offensive line to give that quarterback time, and a play design that puts them in position to make something happen.

Robinson at No. 9 tells a similar story about running backs.

He led the NFL with 2,298 yards from scrimmage last season, the 12th-highest total in league history. Robinson rushed for 1,478 yards and caught 79 passes for another 820, becoming only the second running back ever to finish a season with at least 1,400 rushing yards and 800 receiving yards.

Gibbs was 14th after setting an NFL record with 49 touchdowns through his first three seasons.

The league hasn’t decided running backs don’t matter anymore. It's decided that regular running-back production can be replaced.

Robinson and Gibbs have entered into Christian McCaffrey territory. Both of them can create explosive plays, run legitimate routes, and hurt a defense no matter what the game script looks like. Their offenses don’t have to take them off the field on third down or hide them when they fall behind.

Running back value isn’t dead. It just has to be impossible to ignore now.

Coverage Versatility Is The New Defensive Currency

Four of the first 10 players were defensive backs.

Hamilton was fourth, McDuffie fifth, Derek Stingley Jr. seventh, and Sauce Gardner 10th.

There ended up being seven in the first 18, which probably isn’t a coincidence when you consider what offenses are doing now.

Offensive coordinators are too good at finding the defender they want to pick on. They use motion to expose coverage, bunch formations to create free releases, and personnel groupings that force one defender to choose between two bad options.

A defense can’t answer all of that with corners who only play outside and safeties who only stay deep. The most valuable young defensive backs on this list either do a little bit of everything or handle one brutally difficult assignment at an elite level.

Baltimore's Ball-Hawk

Hamilton's the clearest example.

Calling him a safety doesn’t really tell the story. Last season, he played more coverage snaps in the slot than he did as a traditional safety. Baltimore also moved him around at linebacker a bit.

That kind of flexibility lets the Ravens change the look without changing the personnel. Hamilton can show blitz and drop into coverage, carry a tight end across the middle, or come downhill as an extra run defender.

He’s basically a defensive coordinator’s cheat code, which is a pretty useful thing to have on the field.

Opposing quarterbacks posted a 49 QBR with Hamilton on the field last season and a 90 QBR when he was off it — which is insane. He's now earned All-Pro recognition in three straight seasons.

Baltimore clearly understood what that was worth. The Ravens gave Hamilton a four-year, $100.4 million extension with $82 million guaranteed, making him the highest-paid safety in NFL history.

McDuffie Wants To Prove He Was Worth It

The Rams sent Kansas City a first-round pick, two additional 2026 selections and a 2027 third-rounder to get Trent McDuffie. Then they gave him a four-year, $124 million extension that made him the highest-paid defensive back in the league.

That’s a lot to give up for a corner who only lines up outside and plays man coverage. McDuffie's valuable because he gives the Rams more options than that.

He's played meaningful snaps outside and in the slot, and since entering the NFL, his 31 quarterback pressures and eight forced fumbles are the most among cornerbacks during that span.

He can cover, blitz, tackle, and stay involved when an offense moves their best receiver around. If that receiver slides into the slot, the Rams don’t have to scrap the entire call or suddenly put McDuffie in a role he can’t handle.

That kind of flexibility is a big deal in today’s NFL. Offenses spend all week trying to create one matchup they like. McDuffie makes it harder for them to find one.

The Cornerstone In Houston

Stingley gets there in a different way. Houston doesn’t need to move him all over the formation or ask him to play five different positions because he’s already elite at one of the hardest jobs in football: covering a top receiver on the outside and making it look routine.

He earned first-team All-Pro honors in each of the last two years. Over that stretch, Stingley's allowed just a 44.2 percent completion rate when targeted as the nearest defender, the lowest by anyone who faced at least 100 targets.

That kind of corner changes the math for everyone else. If Stingley can handle a receiver without constant safety help, the defense has more freedom to do other things. The safety can rotate toward another matchup. The front can send an extra rusher. The coordinator can call coverages that probably wouldn’t be on the table if Stingley needed help every snap.

Sauce Looking to Make an Impact in Indy

Gardner landing at No. 10 shows evaluators still believe in that type of player, even after a stretch that wasn’t quite as consistent as his first few seasons.

Indianapolis gave the Jets two first-round picks and Adonai Mitchell to bring in Gardner last season. That price wasn’t based on one good run or a few flashy games. It was based on the belief that his two first-team All-Pro seasons weren't just a hot start to his career.

The league wants defensive backs who take options away.

That can mean following a No. 1 receiver across the formation, disguising coverage before the snap, fitting the run, or turning a routine third-down matchup into something the quarterback has to think twice about. The more problems one defensive back can handle, the less help the defense needs to give him.

That’s what makes players like Sauce so valuable. They don’t have to make a tackle or intercept a pass on every drive to affect the game. Sometimes their biggest contribution is convincing the quarterback not to throw the ball where he wanted to in the first place.

Quarterback Value Still Has To Be Earned

Maye landing at No. 11 will probably be the part of this list that starts the most arguments. No quarterbacks were able to crack the top-10.

He completed a league-high 72 percent of his passes in 2025 and led the NFL in yards per attempt and passer rating. He threw for 4,394 yards, had 31 touchdowns to just eight interceptions, and added another 450 yards on the ground.

New England went 14-3 and made it all the way to the Super Bowl while their 23-year-old quarterback finished just five points behind Matthew Stafford in MVP voting. That's about as strong a season as you can have.

That still doesn’t make No. 11 unreasonable based on the question these evaluators were answering.

Quarterback's the most valuable position in the league. That value comes from more than just what happens on Sundays. It about the scarcity of good quarterbacks, the impact on ticket sales, the cost of finding an alternative, and the fact that it's nearly impossible to contend consistently without competent play there.

But those don’t automatically mean every excellent quarterback is better at his position than Sewell is at tackle or Hamilton is at safety.

Nobody is questioning the tools or the direction Maye's headed in. He's simply played one full season at an elite level, and decision-makers are usually careful about treating one great year as proof that a player is here to stay.

What Matters When Money Doesn’t

The NFL’s contract market will always lean toward quarterbacks and receivers. If the whole league had to do one big fantasy draft, they'd be the first to go because finding an elite quarterback is a lot harder than building a good team around one.

But take the money out of it and ask talent evaluators to judge just what a player does on the field, and their priorities get a lot clearer.

They value players who can control a snap instead of just waiting for the ball to come their way. They value traits that hold up when the scheme changes or the opponent finds a way to take something away. They value defenders who give coordinators more freedom with their calls, and offensive linemen who keep the entire playbook open.

Production still matters. Nacua, Robinson, Smith-Njigba, and Gibbs were too productive to pretend it doesn't.

It just wasn’t an automatic tiebreaker.

They chose the players who make everything around them easier and everything across from them more difficult. That kind of value doesn’t always show up in a stat line, but coaches and evaluators know it when they see it.

All stats courtesy of NFL Pro.

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