Predicting 25 NFL breakout candidates for 2022 - Tiers of players, including Trey Lance, Rashan Gary, Trevor Lawrence, Rashod Bateman

It is a national tradition to pick breakout players before each NFL season. I have resisted the urge for most of my time here at ESPN, but now I have succumbed to temptation. Nothing is more fun than being right about players being good. Nobody likes being wrong, and it's no fun predicting that players will fall off or decline. In August, before we actually have to see players prove themselves in meaningful football games, it's the right time to be wildly optimistic.

Let's run through 25 breakout candidates in 2022. I've split the players into five archetypical tiers, because this would otherwise be a list of first-round picks from 2020 and 2021. (I've excluded rookies.) There are a few highly drafted players from the past couple of years, of course, but I wanted to focus on a variety of guys from different backgrounds at different points in their careers.

These are my opinions, so while I've tried to use as much evidence as possible to make my choices, there are other players who didn't make this list but could qualify for yours. In some cases, I might think players have already broken out, with many of those guys showing up on my All-Underrated Team from last November.

I'll start with the most notable players in each tier and work my way down. I'll begin with a long look at a quarterback who might be capable of making a bigger leap than anybody this season:

Jump to a tier:Bench to SupernovaPro Bowler to Stardom | Starter to Pro BowlRotational to Starter | Post-Hype Candidates

One player who barely played last season but might be an MVP candidate in 2022 belongs in a class of his own. He's not like anybody else on this list, and he's certainly not like the player he's replacing in San Francisco ...

There's nobody in the