Ranking the Top 10 Players in the 2026 NFL Conference Championship Games

And then there were four.

On Sunday, the participants for Super Bowl LX will be determined. First, the Denver Broncos will attempt to overcome the loss of starting quarterback Bo Nix at Mile High against the New England Patriots. Then, in the Pacific Northwest, the Seattle Seahawks and Los Angeles Rams will play a rubber match to see who will represent the NFC in Santa Clara.

It's hardly breaking news to say that all four of these teams are loaded with not only solid NFL players but difference-makers. Teams don't get this deep into the playoffs without a great quarterback. Offensive weapons. Quality in the trenches. A stout defense.

But which of the players taking part in the conference championship games are the best of the best? Who will have the biggest impact on how this week's contests play out?

This list is less about career accomplishments than what these players did in 2025—gotta live in the now. All positions also aren't weighted equally, because that's not how football works.

But here's a look at the 10 best players who will be taking the field this weekend, beginning with a quarterback.

Because, of course, it begins with a quarterback.

10. QB Sam Darnold, Seattle Seahawks

AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson

There's a long list of excellent players who have a case for inclusion here.

Los Angeles Rams wideout Davante Adams. Rams edge-rusher Jared Verse. Seattle Seahawks edge-rusher Demarcus Lawrence. Seahawks cornerback Devon Witherspoon. New England corner Christian Gonzalez. The list goes on. All will play a major role in whether their teams advance to Super Bowl LX.

But the NFL is a quarterback-driven league. And after piling up 14 wins for the second straight regular season (on two different teams), it's past time to say Seattle's Sam Darnold is a pretty good signal-caller.

For the second straight year, he surpassed 4,000 passing yards in 2025—his 4,048 yards through the air was good for fifth in the league. The eighth-year veteran completed a career-best 67.7 percent of his passes, and he came up just short of a triple-digit passer rating for the second consecutive campaign.

Darnold isn't ranked higher on this list because of turnovers—he threw 14 interceptions and fumbled the ball an NFL-high 11 times.

However, the Seahawks wouldn't be playing in the NFC Championship Game were it not for Darnold. And they aren't making it to Super Bowl unless he plays well against the Rams.

9. DT Leonard Williams, Seattle Seahawks

AP Photo/Lindsey Wasson

This is a tough call between a pair of interior linemen—Leonard Williams of the Seahawks and Zach Allen of the Broncos. Both had outstanding 2025 seasons. Both made the Pro Bowl.

Allen was the pick of the Associated Press as the first-team All-Pro at defensive tackle. But it's Williams who gets the nod here.

Williams has long been one of the league's best defensive tackles. The sixth overall pick of the New York Jets back in 2015, he joined the Seahawks via an in-season trade in 2023.

He has been exactly what the team expected—in 2024 he logged his second career season with at least 11 sacks, and while those sacks were down to seven this year, he eclipsed 60 total tackles for the third time in as many years, adding nine tackles for loss and 22 quarterback hits.

Allen had seven sacks in his own right for the Broncos this year and a ridiculous 47 QB hits, but Williams logged more total tackles and tackles for loss.

It's that ability to anchor the line for the NFL's best scoring defense against both the run and the pass that gets Williams into this top 10.

8. OT Garett Bolles, Denver Broncos

AP Photo/Reed Hoffmann

Offensive-line play is a big part of success in the NFL. All four offensive lines left alive in the postseason finished the regular season ranked inside the top 15 by Pro Football Focus.

The Denver Broncos claimed the top spot in those rankings, and the anchor of that offensive front is left tackle Garett Bolles.

A first-round pick of the Broncos in 2017, the 33-year-old has long been a solid if unspectacular lineman. But his ninth professional season was easily his best.

Per PFF, Bolles played 1,126 snaps in 2025—third-most among all offensive tackles. He did commit seven penalties, but coaches are a lot more amenable to the occasional gaffe when a lineman doesn't allow a single sack all season.

Not only did Bolles accomplish that feat, but he was also named to the Pro Bowl for the first time in his career and was a first-team All-Pro.

The Broncos won't have their starting quarterback against the Patriots Sunday, but Jarrett Stidham can take some solace in the fact that the best blindside protector in the NFL this season is covering his back.

7. Edge Byron Young, Los Angeles Rams

AP Photo/Ross D. Franklin

The Los Angeles Rams have a pair of excellent young edge-rushers in Jared Verse and Byron Young. Generally speaking, it's the former who gets the run—and with good reason. Verse was the Defensive Rookie of the Year in 2024 and has been named to the Pro Bowl in both of his professional seasons.

However, it's Young who gets included in these rankings, because he flat-out had the better season in 2025.

To be fair, it's not like his big year came from nowhere. In each of his first two seasons, he eclipsed 60 total tackles and posted at least 7.5 sacks—numbers very similar to what Verse has done the past two years.

But Young took things next-level in 2025—82 total tackles, a dozen tackles for loss, 12 sacks and 29 quarterback hits. He actually should have had 13 sacks, but the 27-year-old lost one to a ridiculous roughing-the-passer call against the New Orleans Saints in early November.

Young is nursing a sore knee, but he's expected to play in Seattle Sunday. How he and Verse do getting after Sam Darnold will go a long way toward determining if the Rams move on to Super Bowl LX.

6. Edge Nik Bonitto, Denver Broncos

AP Photo/Terrance Williams

There a number of outstanding pass-rushers who will be playing in this weekend's conference title games. Four edge-rushers who have advanced this far are hoping to have to take a pass on playing flag football at the Pro Bowl because they'll have other plans in California.

Among those players, no one had more sacks than Nik Bonitto of the Broncos.

He offered a tease of what he was capable of in 2023, when he registered eight sacks. The following season, the Oklahoma product exploded, registering 13.5 sacks and making his first Pro Bowl. That big year got him a four-year, $106 million contract that could be worth $120 million if he hits incentives.

If 2025 is any indication, he's going to keep producing at that level.

Bonitto has quietly become one of the most productive pass-rushers in the league. He set career highs in sacks (14) and quarterback hits (28) in his fourth season. In news that should surprise exactly no one after he just broke the single-season sack record, Myles Garrett of the Cleveland Browns leads the league in sacks over the last two years with 37.

Bonitto's 27.5 is second, ahead of the likes of Micah Parsons of the Green Bay Packers and Will Anderson Jr. of the Houston Texans.

5. CB Patrick Surtain II, Denver Broncos

AP Photo/David Zalubowski

That there is just one defensive player ranked in the top-five here may speak to how offense-centric the NFL has become in 2025. Or it could be a matter of just how great the players ranked ahead of Broncos cornerback Patrick Surtain II are.

But there's no way the reigning NFL Defensive Player of the Year can be ranked any lower than this.

Surtain has been an impact player for the Broncos pretty much from the moment the team drafted him ninth overall back in 2021. Starting with his second season in 2022, Surtain has peeled off four straight Pro Bowl nods.

On some level, Surtain's stats don't blow you away—after intercepting four passes a year ago and leading the league in interception return yards in 2024, Surtain picked off just one pass this season.

But Surtain's big plays were down in part because opponents just avoid targeting him. Surtain's completion percentage against in 2025 of 54.1 is actually better than a year ago, and while his passer rating against was slightly higher, it was still an outstanding 66.6.

Surtain's is one of the league's best at a premium position—and a big part of what makes the Denver defense so formidable.

4. WR Puka Nacua, Los Angeles Rams

AP Photo/Jacob Kupferman

This ranking will no doubt generate some jeers.

There will be readers who feel Rams wideout Puka Nacua should be ranked higher than, say, a young wide receiver he will be playing against this week.

It's splitting hairs. Nacua and that mysterious wideout for the Seahawks (whose name everyone knows, but we're trying to build suspense here) are quite possibly the two best players in the NFL at their position.

In just three seasons, Nacua has gone from a relatively unknown fifth-rounder out of BYU to one of the NFL's most lethal offensive playmakers. After a massive rookie season that included 105 catches and almost 1,500 yards, he went one better in Year 3.

Nacua led the NFL with 129 receptions in 2025, amassing 1,715 yards and 10 touchdowns. Nacua averaged 107.2 yards per game—tops in the league. Three seasons do not a career make, but to this point Nacua has averaged 95.3 receiving yards per game.

No player in the history of the NFL has averaged more.

Not bad for the 177th pick in the 2023 draft.

3. WR Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Seattle Seahawks

AP Photo/Stephen Brashear

This year's Offensive Player of the Year race is a fascinating one. Assuming the award goes to the top non-quarterback, there are a number of worthy candidates, including Puka Nacua of the Rams.

But when the Pro Football Writers of America announced its version of the award this week, it was Seahawks wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba who took home the hardware. And it's next to impossible to say the third-year pro isn't deserving.

Nacua caught 100 passes and topped 1,100 receiving yards in 2024, but he made those numbers look like nothing this season. Smith-Njigba paced the league with 1,793 receiving yards in 2025, and his 119 receptions trailed only Nacua, Arizona Cardinals tight end Trey McBride and Cincinnati Bengals wide receiver Ja'Marr Chase. Both the yardage and reception numbers were franchise records.

What is perhaps most impressive about what Smith-Njigba accomplished this year is that opponents knew he was going to be targeted constantly and could do nothing to stop it. He didn't have a Davante Adams playing opposite him to draw coverage away.

And it didn't matter even a little bit.

2. QB Drake Maye, New England Patriots

AP Photo/Greg M. Cooper

Hitting on a young quarterback in the NFL draft can make or break a franchise. The Patriots hit the jackpot in that regard with Tom Brady in 2000.

It's going to be a while before Drake Maye can be mentioned in the same breath as the New England icon, but the 23-year-old was quite a bit more expensive in the 2024 draft than Brady was back in the day.

However, Maye has the Patriots one game from the franchise's 12th Super Bowl, and New England appears to be right back in the mix among the AFC's best teams for the foreseeable future.

In his second NFL season, Maye was 14-3 as New England's starter. He was fourth in the league with 4,394 passing yards. His 31 touchdown passes paced the AFC. He led the league in passer rating at 113.5 and was fourth among all quarterbacks in 2025 with 450 rushing yards.

Maye has been named to the Pro Bowl in both of his professional seasons, and while nothing in the NFL is guaranteed, he appears to be on the verge of being one of the NFL's best quarterbacks over the next several years.

1. QB Matthew Stafford, Los Angeles Rams

AP Photo/Erin Hooley

That Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford is the highest-ranked player on this list should surprise no one. There are some great players listed here, but he is the closest to a lock for the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

In his 17th professional season, Stafford had one of the best years of his illustrious career—he paced the NFL in both passing yards (4,707) and passing touchdowns (46). He threw just eight interceptions on the season and led the NFL in intended air yards by a wide margin. His passer rating of 109.2 marks a career-high and the third time in his career that Stafford's passer rating has been over 100.

Stafford now sits sixth on the career passing yards list at 64,516, ahead of the likes of Dan Marino and John Elway.

If the Rams upset the Seahawks in Seattle and win in Santa Clara, it will mark his second Super Bowl win since joining the Rams in 2021, and if Maye doesn't win the NFL MVP award, Stafford will. In fact, he is the betting favorite to take home MVP.

He's also the best quarterback left in the postseason, and that gets him the top spot here.