The Atlanta Falcons got their first name on this year’s NFL Top 100 on Wednesday, and it arrived with a contradiction attached. Drake London came in at No. 66 on the list, which is voted on by the league’s players — a 31-spot climb from No. 97 a year ago, and his second straight appearance. In the same week, ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler published his annual survey of executives, coaches and scouts ranking the top 10 wide receivers, and London did not receive a single vote. He wasn’t among the six honorable mentions, either.
Both groups watched the same season. Through the first 11 weeks of 2025, London played nine games and caught 60 passes for 810 yards and six touchdowns — fifth among all NFL receivers in catches, yards and scores at that point, per the team, and the best start of his career. The stretch included a 10-catch, 158-yard Monday night against Buffalo and a nine-catch, 118-yard game at New England with a career-high three touchdowns.
Then came Week 11 against Carolina, where a knee injury cost London the next five games. He returned late but finished at 68 catches for 919 yards and seven touchdowns, short of a second straight 1,000-yard season. That truncated stat line is what the evaluators graded. One coordinator told ESPN that London is “really solid in most areas, great at the 50-50 catch, great in the red zone,” but called him “more of a possession guy” who would “probably be more of a household name with better QB play.”
Atlanta delivered its own verdict in June, signing London to a four-year, $141 million extension with $100 million guaranteed — money that ranks among the top three at the position. The front office paid for the Weeks 1-11 version, and the players who voted him 66th appear to have done the same. The exec-and-scout poll paid for the final stat line. Five missed games explain most of the distance between those two readings.
The unresolved part of the coordinator’s critique is the quarterback. Atlanta opens training camp at the end of the month with Tua Tagovailoa and Michael Penix Jr. still competing for the starting job, and London’s numbers will ride on whoever wins it. His nine healthy games last year worked out to 90 receiving yards per game — a full 17 at that pace lands around 1,500 yards. London doesn’t need a ranking to validate him at this point; he needs 17 games. Falcons fans have learned to hold their optimism loosely, but the receiver has now strung together two seasons of top-tier play interrupted only by circumstance.
