The word ‘elite' is thrown around a lot when it comes to describing football players, and the term is often applied to those who, with all due respect, don't particularly deserve it.

Luckily, PFF has a clear cut definition for the term, a term that when properly used describes a superior payer in terms of ability to the rest of a group; a player that is clearly among the very best at his position. Memories can deceive, and highlights by their nature miss out on the vast majority of a player’s game, but PFF covers every player on every play of every game to give you the most comprehensive analysis of player performance you can find anywhere.

In PFF terms, an elite player is any player who has performed well enough to earn an overall grade of at least 90.0. In 2018, only eight of the 1,132 offensive players who played a snap earned this distinction, four quarterbacks and four wide receivers. However, just two of those players registered elite grades for the fourth year in a row. Those players are New England Patriots‘ quarterback Tom Brady and Atlanta Falcons wide receiver Julio Jones.