Ranking the Top 25 Eagles from the 2022 Super Bowl Season: Nos. 1-5

Back in August, before the Eagles’ Super Bowl LVII run blasted off, colleague John McMullen and I did a daily countdown of our top 25 best Eagles players.

Now that we know what we know, we have done another set of rankings, taking a look at our top 25 best Eagles during this past season’s 16-4 match that ran through the middle of February before ending with a 38-35 loss to the Kansas City Chiefs.

The rankings were derived when McMullen and I submitted our top 25 list to each other and didn’t look at each other’s list until both were submitted.

Like our preseason poll, this one also assigned point values from one to 25, with a first-place vote counting for 25 points, a second-place vote counting for 24 points, and all the way down to a vote at No. 24 accounting for two votes and a vote at No. 25 counting as one point.

Here we go, with rankings No. 1 through 5:

NO. 5: JASON KELCE, 42 POINTS

(preseason poll No. 5: TE Dallas Goedert)

The veteran center finished at the top of the heap in our preseason poll, but in a season where franchise records fell seemingly week after week, Kelce slipped a bit, and not because his play did.

He is still playing at a very high level. Perhaps the highest level of his career, with another first-team AP All-Pro nod added to his resume, which was the fifth of his career.

And, obviously, he’s still an important cog on one of the best offensive lines in the NFL.

All that is acknowledged. It’s just a testament to the depth of the roster that caused just a bit of slippage.

NO. 4: A.J. BROWN, 45 POINTS

(preseason poll No. 4: LT Jordan Mailata)

What a difference the fourth-year receiver made in the offense. Teamed with good friend Jalen Hurts, Brown responded with a career season. He rewrote the team’s single-season receiving yardage record with 1,496 yards, tied his career high with 11 touchdowns, including three in a win over the Pittsburgh Steelers, and made 88 catches.

As for our preseason No. 4, Jordan Mailata, the left tackle got off to a slow start and suffered a shoulder injury that hampered him for most of the season, before coming on strong at the end. He dropped to No. 12 in our postseason ranking.

NO. 3: HAASON REDDICK, 46 POINTS

(preseason poll No. 3: RT Lane Johnson)

Reddick arrived with big expectations and lived up to them, though the Kracz/McMullen jury was still out when he got to town and had him at No. 8 in our preseason ranking.

He signed a three-year contract last offseason after posting back-to-back, double-digit-sack seasons. He made it three in a row with 16 sacks in the regular season and added 3.5 more in three postseason games. He was everything and more GM Howie Roseman could have hoped for when he signed him, and set to turn 29 in September, is still in his prime.

His 39.5 regular season sacks over the past three seasons are more than anyone else other than Myles Garrett and T.J. Watt.

NO. 1: JALEN HURTS AND LANE JOHNSON, 48 POINTS EACH

(preseason poll No. 2: WR A.J. Brown; No. 1 C Jason Kelce)

We have a dead heat for our top spot.

Kracz had Hurts No. 1 in his rankings; McMullen had Johnson in his top spot.

Hard to quibble with either one, really.

What is difficult to quibble with was our preseason ranking of Hurts. We had the QB at No. 13.

McMullen elevated Hurts to No. 3 in his end-of-season rankings. Any doubters he may have had coming into the season should be all gone by now after an MVP-caliber season.

Meanwhile, Johnson continues to prove just how vital he is on the offensive line, and head coach Nick Sirianni refers to him as the best right tackle, maybe the best tackle, on the planet.

Kracz had Johnson ranked third, behind Hurts and Reddick.

Johnson, who hasn’t allowed a sack in more than two years, tore an adductor muscle late in the season and the Eagles went 1-1 in those games. He delayed surgery, opting to play through the postseason, and ended up having surgery four days after Super Bowl LVII.

Ranking the Top 25 Eagles from the 2022 Super Bowl Season

Ed Kracz is the publisher of SI.com’s Fan Nation Eagles Today and co-host of the Eagles Unfiltered Podcast. Check out the latest Eagles news at www.SI.com/NFL/Eagles or www.eaglestoday.com and please follow him on Twitter: @kracze.