Five Ravens made the top 100 players list for 2026: Lamar Jackson, Kyle Hamilton, Derrick Henry, Roquan Smith and Trey Hendrickson. That is not a fun-fact for the team account. That is a roster with a star at quarterback, a star at safety, a star at running back, a star at linebacker and a star coming off the edge, which is roughly the shape of every Baltimore team that has ever mattered.
I don't have the individual slots in front of me, just the five names. Honestly, the five names are the story.
Which Ravens made the top 100 players list?
Jackson is the obvious one, and the least interesting to argue about. Hamilton is the safety who broke the position's ceiling in Baltimore, the kind of defender you have to draw up around rather than account for. Henry is the closest thing modern football has to a weather event, a runner who put up a 2,000-yard season in Tennessee in 2020 and then refused to age on schedule. Smith is the middle of the defense, acquired from Chicago in the middle of a season, which almost never works and worked immediately.
And Hendrickson in purple is the line that stops you cold. However he got to Baltimore, he arrived with a league-leading sack season from 2024 attached to his name, and pass rush has been the item this franchise has spent the better part of a decade shopping for.
Five different doors into the same building
The part I keep chewing on is that not one of these guys got here the same way. That's a tell about how this front office actually operates.
| Player | Position | Drafted |
|---|---|---|
| Lamar Jackson | QB | Round 1, 2018 |
| Kyle Hamilton | S | Round 1, 2022 |
| Roquan Smith | LB | Round 1, 2018 |
| Trey Hendrickson | EDGE | Round 3, 2017 |
| Derrick Henry | RB | Round 2, 2016 |
Two homegrown first-rounders. One in-season trade for a linebacker other teams had decided was a luxury. One veteran running back signed at an age the analytics crowd tells you to walk away from, who then ran like the memo never reached him. And one edge rusher drafted in the third round by somebody else entirely, now the most feared player on this defense.
That is five doors into the same building. Most teams find one and jam it.
checked the almanac: the 2000 Ravens allowed 165 points across a 16-game season, the fewest ever in a 16-game year, and Ray Lewis walked off with Defensive Player of the Year and a Super Bowl MVP out of the same run. Baltimore has never had a talent problem when its defense had names on it. It has had January problems.
What the list does not tell you
Here is the honest counterpoint, and I'd say it to any Ravens fan reading with their chest puffed out. Preseason top 100 lists have been extremely kind to this roster before. They were kind in the years the season ended a round earlier than it should have. Nobody in Baltimore is short on individual accolades. What they've been short on is the last game.
A list is a snapshot of talent. Football is a test of health, depth and the fourth quarter of one specific night in January. Five names in the top 100 tells you the ceiling is real. It says nothing about the floor, and the floor is where seasons actually get decided.
Still, name me the other rosters carrying a two-time MVP, an All-Pro safety, a Hall-of-Fame-track back, a top-five linebacker and a recent sack champion at the same time. It is a short list, and being on it beats the alternative.
What I'm watching next: how Baltimore uses Hamilton and Hendrickson together, because a safety with that range and an edge rusher with that get-off are the two pieces that let a defensive coordinator do genuinely unfair things. If those two are working off each other by midseason, the fifth name on this list stops being a talking point and starts being a problem for everybody else.