Football is back, and the NFL is set to take over televisions across America.
In today’s league, though, NFL superstars don’t just take over televisions in the fall—their highlights will also be dominating social media feeds across the country for the next five months.
To prepare for the 2019 season, we analyzed the social media channels of players across the NFL to determine which athletes have been the most active and engaging on social over the last 12 months.
Superstar wide receiver Odell Beckham Jr. leads the league in total engagements by a wide margin, with quarterback Tom Brady ranking second in the category.
Both Beckham Jr. and Brady prolifically use video to capture the attention of their followers, with Brady generating more than 220 million total views, the most of any NFL athlete. Not far behind him is Pittsburgh Steelers wideout JuJu Smith-Schuster, racking up over 191 million video views on Instagram.
JuJu also ranks third for total athlete-driven engagements, one spot ahead of former teammate and current Oakland Raider Antonio Brown.
No player increased their following at a more impressive rate than second-year running back Phillip Lindsay, who was able to grow his audience more than 1280 percent after taking over as the Broncos’ starting running back last season.
Top NFL Athletes on Social
Below is our analysis of the NFL’s top athletes on social media. The ranking includes data measuring athlete activity, audience, engagement, and growth on Twitter and Instagram from August 26, 2018, to August 26, 2019.
