Creed Humphrey has allowed one sack in the last two seasons combined. He has been a first-team All-Pro in both of them. His peers just voted him the 94th-best player in football.
The Kansas City Chiefs center landed at No. 94 on the NFL’s player-voted Top 100, revealed June 25. On PFN’s Top 100, released July 13, he came in at No. 26. That is a 68-spot chasm between how the league’s own players see Humphrey and how the tape and the numbers see him, and only one side of that gap holds up.
Why PFN Ranks Creed Humphrey 68 Spots Higher Than the NFL Top 100
Ian Cummings didn’t bury the lede on the PFN’s Football Debate Club.
“It’s time to give some respect to the Hog Mollies, and it starts with Kansas City Chiefs center Creed Humphrey,” Cummings said. “On the annual NFL Top 100 players list, he’s just the 94th best player in the league, barely top 100, but on PFN’s recently released Top 100, he ranks as the 26th best player in the entire NFL.”
The case starts with the grading. Cummings pointed to Humphrey as “a top five offensive lineman in the PFN OL Impact metric in 2025” and “the top overall offensive lineman in 2024.” PFN’s published rankings put Humphrey at an 89.1 OL Impact score last season, tops among all centers, after a 100.0 in 2024.
That 2024 number is the one worth sitting with. “He achieved what no other offensive lineman has ever been able to do in 2024 since the inception of the grading process in 2019, and that’s score a perfect 100 grade,” Cummings said.
Grades alone don’t move a player 68 spots, and Cummings knows the objection before you raise it. “While the analytics are elite, the film backs it up too,” he said. “He brings the perfect confluence of explosion, power, strength, aggression, and angle IQ in the run game, and as a pass protector, he brings the perfect confluence of anchor, vision, and proactive hands, and his reliability winning the contact point is near unmatched among NFL offensive linemen.”
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Two years. One sack allowed. Three penalties. Eighty-five straight starts to open a career. Those aren’t projections, they’re receipts.
The NFL Top 100 Has a Center Problem, Not a Creed Humphrey Problem
Here is the tell. Humphrey and Colts guard Quenton Nelson are the only interior linemen in the Top 100’s first 10 reveals, and Humphrey barely cleared the cut line in a year when he was a first-team All-Pro and a Pro Bowler for the fourth straight season. Players vote for the guys who beat them, and nobody remembers the center who quietly won the contact point on every snap of a 6-11 season.
The money tells the same story. Humphrey plays on an $18 million average annual salary. Tyler Linderbaum, whom PFN ranks 50 spots below Humphrey at No. 76, just got $27 million per year from the Raiders. The worse center is the richer one by $9 million a year.
PFN’s list isn’t handing out participation trophies to blockers, either. Only Penei Sewell and Garett Bolles rank ahead of Humphrey among offensive linemen, and both play tackle, the position that gets paid and gets noticed. Zach Frazier, the next-highest center, sits at 75.
“Any way you slice it, Humphrey is one of the elite offensive performers in the league regardless of position, and that’s why he’s a fringe top 25 guy on our board,” Cummings said.
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Kansas City went 6-11, Patrick Mahomes tore his ACL in Week 15, and the roster is going to look different in 2026. None of that is Humphrey’s doing, and the player-voted list punished him for the address on his locker anyway. The one thing the Chiefs never have to think about is the guy snapping the ball.
