In case you missed it, Maurice Jones-Drew has been rated highly by Pat Kirwan of NFL.com on his list of the NFL's best running backs. Jones-Drew also made ESPN's power rankings of the top 10 offensive players in the NFL.
Kirwan rated Jones-Drew in "Group A" of his list. He sets up his list in groups of five, but he doesn't rank the players within each group. That being the case, we know that he at least considers MJD one of the top 5 running backs in the NFL. Arian Foster and Chris Johnson also were featured in "Group A." I guess the AFC South is more of a running division than we perceive it to be.
From NFL.com, I cruised over to Paul Kuharsky's AFC South blog at ESPN.com. There, he had a post showing the divisional writers' ballots ranking the top 10 offensive players in the league. Of the top 10 on the list, Jones-Drew received the least amount of top 10 votes (3), but he was ranked highly by those that did vote for him (4th, 6th, and 3rd). That was enough to put him in the 7th position overall on the list. This list surprised me a little. First off, I was surprised that only 3 of the 8 writers voted for MJD. I was also surprised to see offensive tackles on the list. Don't get me wrong, the list is right. Joe Thomas and Jake Long both deserve to be on the list, but you just don't expect to see them in a top 10 offensive players list.