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96. Pernell McPhee, LB, Bears
When McPhee bolted the linebacker-friendly confines of Baltimore for the Bears last year in free agency, he moved out of the shadow of Ravens teammates Terrell Suggs and Elvis Dumervil. After a tremendous all-around season at outside linebacker in Chicago, McPhee should no longer be a secret. Between snuffing out the run (his forte) and chasing down quarterbacks (Pro Football Focus had McPhee as the game’s best pass rusher on a per-snap basis in 2015, with 45 total pressures in 205 snaps), McPhee has a strong case as last off-season’s best free-agent signing.
Greg Bedard is a senior NFL writer who covered the Patriots, Packers and Dolphins as a newspaper beat writer and wrote a weekly column for The MMQB before joining SI as a senior NFL writer in 2015.