Even though they won only eight combined games over the last two seasons, the New England Patriots have some young stars on their roster. While quarterback Drake Maye is the big name among them, and understandably so given his position and the promise he showed as a rookie in 2024, none shines brighter than Christian Gonzalez.

Just don’t tell Pro Football Focus.

The oft-quoted website released its list of the Top 25 players under 25 entering the 2025 NFL season on Monday, and neither Gonzalez nor any of his teammates where anywhere to be seen.

Players like Drake Maye getting snubbed, at least in this year’s version of that list, does make some sense; there is plenty of young talent in the NFL that performed at a more consistent level so far. Gonzalez, however, is a snub of the highest order.

A first-round draft pick by the Patriots in 2023, the 22-year-old was one of the league’s top-performing cornerbacks during the 2024 season — his first full year after missing the final 13 games as a rookie due to a shoulder injury. As a result of his play, Gonzalez was voted second-team All-Pro, a finalist for the Comeback Player of the Year award, and widely recognized as one of the best players in football that his position has to offer.

And yet, PFF went for a contrarian perspective for much of the year. Three weeks into the season, he was ranked 95th among 112 qualifying cornerbacks despite more than just holding his own against the likes of Ja’Marr Chase, DK Metcalf and Garrett Wilson; we wrote about this rather curious ranking at the time.

Gonzalez did improve to 15th on the list by the time the season was up, but even that feels low. For example, of the players above him, only first-team All-Pro Derek Stingley Jr. allowed a lower completion percentage; only three players (Stingley Jr., Marlon Humphrey, Terell Smith) allowed a lower passer rating.

Of course, neither of those statistics is a fully accurate representation of quality cornerback play either. Still, they do show that Gonzalez — even within PFF’s own charting — was better relative to his peers than his 76.0 grade or 15th-place ranking would suggest, particularly considering that he was going against opponents’ No. 1 wide receivers on a week-to-week basis.

But even if PFF grades are used as a measurement to determine the Top 25 list, Gonzalez not making it feels odd. Just look at fellow 2023 first-round draft pick Devon Witherspoon of the Seattle Seahawks.

A quality player in his own right, Witherspoon is certainly deserving of a spot on the list; he is ranked 16th overall. Going strictly by PFF grade, however, his case versus Gonzalez’s is not that much stronger.

Witherspoon is graded just 0.1 points higher overall, while trailing Gonzalez in what one would believe to be the two most important numbers for cornerbacks: he has a lower coverage (69.2 to 78.2) and tackling grade (52.8 to 75.8), and only has Gonzalez beat in run defense (90.0 to 59.0) and pass rush (78.3 to 74.9). And yet, he has made the Top 25 list as the No. 3 cornerback behind first-team All-Pro Stingley Jr. and second-team All-Pro Trent McDuffie.

Fellow second-team All-Pro Gonzalez, meanwhile, is on the outside looking in. For PFF author Jon Macri, the reason behind the snub is not primarily his performance in 2024 but rather him missing most of 2023 due to injury:

Yeah, that was a tough one for me – came down to making sure the list reasonably aligns with the grades which Achane really stood out through his first two years. Fifth-highest-graded player across all positions on the list, so couldn’t leave him out.

Gonzalez, and arguably a few others, could have made it but had to cut it off somewhere, and because of injury for him in 2023, the one full-year sample also worked against him.

Imagine he’ll be on the list next year if he continues to play as well.

While there is some merit to the argument — Gonzalez played just 20 of 34 possible games since entering the league — his available sample size still has most of the other players on the list beat. He effectively was a top-10 cornerback in the NFL the moment he set foot on the field as a rookie, and only added to his body of work since.

Ultimately, though, there are a few truths that cannot be disregarded in all of this:

1.) Player rankings are always subjective even when using supposedly objective statistics as a basis.

2.) There is no real reason to get upset over a list like this, but it’s the middle of the offseason so it at least gives us something to talk about.

3.) Neither Gonzalez nor the Patriots are bothered by his rating, something he himself said when asked about his PFF grade last season (“People watch the games and see what happens. I don’t really pay attention to the numbers.”)

The most important truth, however, remains this one: putting everything into account — statistics and game tape — Gonzalez is still a top-5 cornerback in football and one of the best players in the NFL under the age of 25, despite continuing to be undervalued by PFF.