Jared Allen Shows Up Much Earlier Than He Should On NFL Network Top 100 List

The NFL Network's "Top 100 of 2012" list revealed players 20 through 11 this evening, and up to this point neither Jared Allen nor Adrian Peterson had been mentioned. Well, one of them was mentioned in tonight's program. . .and it wasn't the one that most, including myself, probably figured that it would have been.

Yes, following a season where he registered 22 quarterback sacks despite playing in front of a historically bad secondary, Jared Allen's peers voted him as the 13th-best player in the National Football League. I figured that Allen was a lock for the Top 10, being runner-up for the Defensive Player of the Year Award and all, but it was not to be.

Allen coming in at #13 left the Vikings' Week 1 opponents, the Jacksonville Jaguars, as the lone team without a player on the list. That didn't last long, though, as running back Maurice Jones-Drew came in just ahead of Allen at #12.

Baltimore Ravens' defensive end Terrell Suggs, the man that beat Allen for the DPoY award, came in at #11. This means one of two things for Adrian Peterson. Either a) his peers voted him into the top 10, despite him not having an incredible season and getting injured, or b) he had the most precipitous of falls, going from #3 (and the highest-rated non-quarterback) on last year's list to falling out of the top 100 completely.

I have a really hard time imagining that "b" would be the case. Then again, I would have had a really hard time imagining Jared Allen not being in the Top 10 until it actually happened, too.