Guard · Indianapolis Colts

Quenton Nelson

No. 56 · 9th season

The list came out. Nelson's name was on it. Again.

There are players who make headlines and players who make the players around them better. Quenton Nelson has spent his career being the second kind — the one who holds the line, literally, while someone else gets the glory.

Nelson plays offensive line for the Indianapolis Colts, which means his job is to protect the people with the ball. It is physically brutal, largely anonymous work. The crowd does not chant your name when you do it right. You only really hear about an offensive lineman when something goes wrong.

Which is part of what the NFL Top 100 means for a player like Nelson. It is a list of the league's best players, voted on by the players themselves — the people who know, up close, what it costs to be great. Getting there once is hard. Getting there again means your peers still see you, still feel you, still rate you among the best in the game.

For Nelson, it is the kind of recognition that does not come with a lot of noise. Just a name on a list. Which, for someone who does his best work in the quiet of the trenches, might be exactly right.

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