The Bears guard won the inaugural NFL Protector of the Year award, allowed zero sacks on 643 pass blocks, and posted the top PFF pass-blocking grade among all guards in 2025. It took all of that — in year ten — to land on the player-voted Top 100 for the first time.

The NFL's 2026 Top 100 Players list — voted on exclusively by active players — placed Joe Thuney at No. 49 on Tuesday, the Bears guard's first-ever appearance on the list in his tenth professional season.

That the league's best interior offensive lineman needed a newly invented award named specifically for the league's best interior offensive lineman to finally get peer recognition is the story inside the number. Thuney won the AP's top interior offensive lineman honor and was named the inaugural NFL Protector of the Year at February's NFL Honors — capping a 2025 campaign in which he allowed zero sacks on 643 pass blocks and posted an 88.6 pass-blocking grade from Pro Football Focus, tops among 81 qualified guards. He logged 1,149 total snaps, played 99.5% of the Bears' offensive plays, allowed just one QB hit, and was flagged twice all season.

The No. 49 slot may understate him — the Top 100 is player-voted, and guards don't accumulate the visible production that quarterbacks and pass rushers do. But the placement carries its own marker: the Bears now have two players in the upper half of the list, with Caleb Williams slotting in at No. 51 last Thursday. A franchise that couldn't protect Mitchell Trubisky is now producing the top peer vote-getters at both quarterback and guard.

Thuney arrived in Chicago on a four-year deal in 2024. He owns four Super Bowl rings, four straight Pro Bowl nods, and three All-Pro citations. It took an NFC North title — Chicago's first division championship since 2018 — and an award created to honor exactly what he does to finally get him counted.

The number is 49. After ten years, it's probably still too low.