Jordyn Brooks is back among the NFL’s top-10 off-ball linebackers, checking in at No. 7 in ESPN’s annual rankings of league executives, coaches and scouts published Tuesday by Jeremy Fowler. It is the Miami Dolphins star’s return to the list after falling to “received votes” territory a year ago, and it comes on the strength of a first-team All-Pro season.
The production case is hard to argue with. Brooks led the NFL in tackles last season, the first Dolphins player to do that since Zach Thomas in 2006. Per ESPN, his 5.9% run stop percentage topped all off-ball linebackers, and his 13 tackles for loss ranked second at the position. At least one voter had him as high as No. 3. “Brooks has a skill set similar to Demario Davis when he was young — really strong, fast, physical, can play in space, very good tackler,” an NFL coordinator told Fowler.
The route here was not smooth. Brooks was the 27th pick of the 2020 draft in Seattle and looked like an ascending player until an ACL tear late in the 2022 season compromised his 2023 campaign. He rebuilt his career in Miami, and at 28 he is now the most established piece of a defense that has been stripped down around him. That matters more this year than most: with a new front office and coaching staff turning over the roster, Brooks’s range is the rare thing on this defense that does not need projecting. On a unit full of question marks, the coordinator’s scouting report — strong, fast, everywhere — is the closest thing Miami has to a certainty.
Fowler’s positional series has been friendly to this roster’s foundation: center Aaron Brewer debuted at No. 10 among interior offensive linemen two days earlier. For a rebuilding team, having voters across the league confirm your cornerstones is a useful audit of what the new regime inherited.
The fantasy angle is straightforward for IDP players: a tackle-title winner who plays every down is a top-five IDP linebacker, and the state of Miami’s roster suggests plenty of opposing snaps and tackle opportunities again in 2026. In leagues without IDP, Brooks’s ranking is mostly a signal about Miami’s run defense holding up better than the rebuild narrative implies.
