Every offseason brings a fresh wave of ranking lists across the sports media landscape. And CBS Sports has now added its top-100 NFL players contribution to the pile.
Most of the placements will pass without much controversy. One, however, may raise eyebrows across Broncos Country, the decision to slot Pat Surtain II at No. 11 on the list.
On a recent edition of the morning show on 104.3 The Fan, hosts Josh Dover and Will Petersen made their case for why Surtain deserved better.
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To be clear, No. 11 is not an insulting ranking on its face. This isn’t a position-by-position exercise. This is a list attempting to sort the entire NFL by individual value, and cracking the top 11 of that group is incredibly impressive. But the sting comes from where Surtain fell, just outside the top 10.
When you consider what he brings to the field, that gap becomes harder to justify. Dover framed the objection through the lens of positional importance.
“The best cornerback in the entire NFL, and that’s a marquee position. Quarterback ss pretty important, the trenches, and then corners right? How is he not in the top-10?” Dover asked.
That argument holds up under scrutiny. Cornerback is one of the most difficult positions to play in professional football, and there is no debate about who the best player at that spot currently is. Surtain has firmly separated himself from the field.
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He is a former Defensive Player of the Year. He locks down the best receivers in the league on a weekly basis. And he plays a position where the very best rarely get their due because the position itself is defined by what it prevents rather than what it produces.
Dover made his verdict clear.
“I think CBS got this one wrong,” he said.
Petersen backed the argument with specific evidence from Surtain’s résumé.
“And a former Defensive Player of the Year on his résumé. You look at what he did to Ja’Marr Chase last year on a ‘Monday Night Football’ game, held him to one catch for eight yards,” Petersen said.
That performance alone is a case study in why Surtain belongs at the very top of the defensive conversation. Chase is arguably the best receiver in football, and Surtain neutralized him completely on a national stage.
That is not a small feat. That is the kind of individual dominance that separates legendary corners from very good ones.
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Petersen then addressed the structural reason Surtain’s numbers don’t always jump off the page.
“He doesn’t put up the sexiest stats necessarily, because teams are so scared to throw his direction. And when they do throw his direction, he makes plays, like he did against the Green Bay Packers, and makes you pay with a big-time interception,” Petersen said.
Opposing quarterbacks avoid him. Coordinators design entire game plans around not challenging his side of the field. That reality caps his interception opportunities and his tackle totals in ways that make the traditional stats undersell just how dominant he actually is.
When you factor in the games where he essentially eliminates a receiver by his presence alone, the case for Surtain sitting inside the top ten becomes overwhelming.
CBS put him at 11. The next few weeks will show where the NFL’s Top 100 places him.
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Dover and Petersen believe Pat Surtain II deserves single digits. And based on the evidence, it’s difficult to argue otherwise.