Kevin Byard

New England Patriots

Pos S

Updated October 8, 2026

Compare Kevin Byard S rankings →

Model Score

93.0 MODEL

2018

96.0

2019

90.7

2020

86.2

2021

91.7

2022

85.8

2023

79.6

2024

86.2

2025

89.0

2026

93.0

How good he is at what he is supposed to be doing, out of 100. Not a projection of what he will do next, and not a read on his contract. Median is about 70, and a 95 is rare. How it is built →

STM Take

Three Pro Bowls plus two 1st-team All-Pros plus the 2021 tier 1 (#2) STTM peak plus the Middle Tennessee Conference USA 3rd-round origin puts Byard in the rarest outlier-positive Hall-of-Fame trajectory S class. The 2025 tier 3 (#18) Bears bounce-back at age 32 confirms the elite ceiling is still reachable in the late chapter. The 2026 question is whether Byard extends through age 33 or whether the structural late-career closure finally takes hold.

Byard came out of Middle Tennessee as the Tennessee Titans' 3rd-round pick (64th overall) in 2016. He has made three Pro Bowls (2017, 2021, 2022) plus earned two 1st-team All-Pro selections (2017, 2021). He has bounced through the Titans, Eagles, and now Bears across 10 NFL seasons. His STTM career runs tier 1 (#2) in 2021, tier 2 (#15) in 2022, tier 5 (#34) in 2023, tier 5 (#33) in 2024, and tier 3 (#18) bounce-back in 2025.

Strengths

Three Pro Bowls plus two 1st-team All-Pros plus 2021 tier 1 (#2) STTM peak as a Middle Tennessee Conference USA 3rd-round pick puts him in the rarest outlier-positive Hall-of-Fame trajectory class.
10 years of NFL elite production across three systems gives him real veteran market value with the late-career bounce-back.

Concerns

Two-year tier 5 (#34, #33) stretch in 2023-2024 confirms the structural late-career decline was real before the 2025 bounce.
Age 32 plus 10 years of S wear puts the late-career structural closure question on every 2026 projection.

What to watch: Whether Byard extends through age 33 in 2026 plus holds tier 4 or better, the threshold for closing the elite Hall-of-Fame S career case.