John Rieger-USA TODAY Sports
According to ESPN, Kansas City Chiefs’ outside linebacker Justin Houston is the 87th best defensive player in the NFL.
Considering that the NFL is the best football league in the world, that makes him the 87th best defensive player in the world.
Now that’s impressive.
Here’s an explanation on how ESPN is ranking these players, per the ESPN.com story:
"We polled 63 experts to rate each player on a 0-to-10 scale, with 10 being the best regardless of position in the NFL. Ties, as denoted by an asterisk, were broken by determining which player had more ballots with the higher number (If players are tied, the player with three 10s is ranked higher than the player with two 10s. If the tied players had the same amount of highest numbers — each with two 10s — we moved to the next number: three 9s beats two 9s)."
And here’s what ESPN had to say about Houston:
"Houston has recorded all 15.5 of his career sacks since Week 12 of the 2011 season, tops on the Chiefs and tying him for ninth in the NFL during that span.— ESPN Stats & Information (@ESPNStatsInfo)"
In two seasons with the Chiefs, Houston has totaled 99 tackles, 15.5 sacks, 2 forced fumbles, 2 fumble recoveries and one interception. Those are stats that he should improve on in 2013, especially with Kansas City implementing an aggressive defensive scheme.
No other Chiefs have shown up on the list just yet on either side of the ball, but that just means we may see a few of them higher up—which is good.
Predictions on who else will make the list? Sound off below.