Garett Bolles is back among the league’s best, and this time the players themselves put him there.
The Denver Broncos left tackle checked in at No. 42 on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2026, the annual countdown voted on by NFL players and rolled out daily on X and NFL.com. The reveal landed Friday, July 31, with Bolles slotted directly ahead of two significant names: Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow at No. 44 and Chiefs pass rusher Chris Jones at No. 43, according to Denver Sports.
The NFL’s official X account made it official, posting a hype video tagging the Broncos and NFL Films:
No. 42 on the NFL Top 100 Players of 2026…@broncos OT Garett Bolles! @NFLFilms pic.twitter.com/V0HcCsuTKN
— NFL (@NFL) July 31, 2026
A Long Wait Between Appearances
This marks just the second Top 100 nod of Bolles’ career — and his first since 2021, when he ranked No. 82. Back then, Bolles was still climbing out of a rocky start to his career that included penalty trouble and inconsistent play. Five seasons later, he’s a completely different player, and the league’s locker rooms noticed.
The video accompanying the announcement showed Bolles getting recognized by a stacked group of pass rushers, including Micah Parsons, Will Anderson Jr., Danielle Hunter, Arik Armstead and Kayvon Thibodeaux, Denver Sports reported. That’s not a small detail. Pass rushers voting a left tackle into their top 100 is about as credible an endorsement as it gets — these are the players lining up across from Bolles every Sunday.
The Numbers Behind the Ranking
Bolles didn’t just have a good 2025 season. He had a historically clean one. He allowed zero sacks across more than 1,100 offensive snaps, an eye-opening number for any tackle, let alone one protecting a young franchise quarterback in Bo Nix. That performance earned him first-team All-Pro honors and his first career Pro Bowl selection, both first-time achievements in a career that started back in 2017 as the 20th overall pick out of Utah.
Per Bleacher Report, Bolles ranked ninth among all offensive tackles with a 94 percent pass-block win rate on 418 total plays, drawing on ESPN’s metrics from the 2025 season. Those same metrics had the Broncos’ offensive line ranked in the top eight leaguewide in both pass-block and run-block win rate — a big reason Nix has developed as quickly as he has behind Bolles at left tackle.
Durability matters here too. Bolles has been an iron man since the start of the 2023 season, appearing in all 54 Broncos games between the regular season and playoffs, including every single snap in 44 of those contests, Bleacher Report noted.
Where Bolles Fits Among Broncos on the List
Bolles is now the fourth Broncos player revealed on this year’s list, joining defensive lineman Zach Allen (No. 73), wide receiver Courtland Sutton (No. 68) and quarterback Bo Nix (No. 59), according to the Denver Gazette. The top 40 have not yet been revealed, and cornerback Pat Surtain II — the reigning Defensive Player of the Year runner-up caliber talent — along with linebacker Nik Bonitto and guard Quinn Meinerz are all still waiting on their numbers.
The NFL Top 100 reveal runs in stages through early September, with two players unveiled each weekday before the countdown narrows to one reveal per day once it reaches the top 10, per NFL.com.
| Broncos Player | Position | 2026 Top 100 Rank |
|---|---|---|
| Bo Nix | Quarterback | No. 59 |
| Courtland Sutton | Wide Receiver | No. 68 |
| Zach Allen | Defensive Lineman | No. 73 |
| Garett Bolles | Left Tackle | No. 42 |
What It Means Heading Into Camp
Bolles is entering his age-34 season, and durability at that age for a tackle is never guaranteed. But nothing about his 2025 tape suggested decline. If anything, he looks like he’s playing his best football at the least convenient time for anyone trying to beat him off the edge.
For a Broncos team that fell just short of a championship last season and heads into 2026 as a legitimate Super Bowl contender, having a top-45 player anchoring the blind side is exactly the kind of foundation that gets built on. Bolles, now 34, has said his focus is on finishing his career with a Super Bowl — and this ranking is a reminder that the players trying to stop him still see him as one of the best in the business.
