More impressive: 2,000 rushing yards or 2,000 receiving yards?

Since Adrian Peterson (102 yards away) and Calvin Johnson (108 yards away) are likely to both hit the mark this season, which do you think is more impressive?

Feel free to take into account injury history, offensive systems, evolution of offensive strategies, etc.

 

Rushing yards. That many receiving yards means you're stuck in Loserville -- not you as an individual (because Megatron is indeed awesome), but that's just so many empty garbage yards.

 

Tough question. I will lean toward rushing yards, just because it seems harder to bust that 75-yarder on the ground. So you probably need more touches and more hits to reach that mark.

But either one is a hell of an accomplishment.

I never did get the "loser" argument. Seems like it's much harder to get your stuff when you're the only weapon your team has and opposing defense are always keying on you. Jerry Rice and Emmitt Smith were certainly great players, but both benefitted from playing most of their careers on teams with other stars, as well.

 

Different era ... 4,000 passing yards used to be rare too.

2,000 rushing yards is a he-man achievement. 2,000 receiving yards ... I would love to see a breakdown of how many yards he got when they were trailing by 14 or more points in the second half. I bet it's at least 600. His two 200-yard games, they lost both by double digits and they trailed by 17 in one and 18 in the other.

 

Receiving yards has never been done. There have been six men to break 2,000 yards rushing yards. That includes jamal lewis and chris johnson.

As for the loser argument....sanders, dickerson and simpson never won a super bowl. Davis got 2000 and his team won the super bowl. Lewis did but that was before his big year.

That being said ...i think 2000 receiving yards will soon get beat a lot.

 

Jerry Rice in 1995 would be evidence against that.

 

He still got the yards. And being down 14 doesn't mean a game is over in the NFL. You certainly can't assume that only a bad team would have a receiver put up numbers like that, not with so many pass-heavy offenses in the NFL.

I do think rushing is more impressive even though it has been done and receiving has not (yet).

 

The similarity between Rice in 1995 and Megatron this season is that both teams have high-powered passing attacks with only one real target.

 

For me, hitting 2K receiving is more of a "wow" accomplishment since it hasn't been done. But I agree with whoever said it would happen more in the future.

 

I don't think there are going to be more 2,000 yard receivers anytime soon...

Too many things have to be aligned to have a shot at 2,000 yards. You need a high-powered quarterback with a mediocre running game and no legitimate No. 2 receiver.

Fitzgerald probably could have gotten close when Warner was in Arizona, but he had Boldin on the other side and he was going to get a lot thrown his way.

Rice had a lot going for him the year he set the record. Ricky Watters had just left. Owens hadn't been drafted yet. Brent Jones and John Taylor were toward the end of their careers. Young and Grbac that season had two options, the short pass to Derek Loville or the long pass to Rice.

 

They were 11-5 and lost their first playoff game. Not exactly a historically great team. Regardless, though, citing the best player in the history of the game, he's a bit of an outlier. I don't know that Jerry Rice is evidence of a whole lot any more than Babe Ruth is evidence of how easy it was to hit home runs.

I'm more impressed by Johnson getting 1,681 yards last year as they were in the running for a playoff spot. I watched a lot of those Detroit end-of-game drives this year (fantasy dork) and Megatron racked up a lot of yards against soft zone coverage at the end of the game. Just as one example, they were down by two touchdowns with 3:05 left against Atlanta and from that point he caught two passes for 47 yards. As I said, I bet you could find 600 yards that fit into that sort of situation. They had a lot of big deficits and meaningless end-of-game drives.

There's a much stronger connection between a huge rushing season and a winning team than there is for receiving.

There's really no championship connection either way, FWIW. From a quick glance it looks like Terrell Davis is the only one who went top-10 in either category for a Super Bowl winner.

 

I don't give a shit what a team's record is, if they have a 2,000-yard receiver, that's fucking impressive. Mainly because IT'S NEVER BEEN DONE BEFORE!

Oh, and I guess there's no Madden cover jinx this year.