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

People have broached the subject of winning talking about garbage time and all the analysis of how awful Detroit is. But go deeper than that, and we realize anyone going for either 2,000 rushing or reviving yards isn't a good situation for winning.

Lets take those six 2,000 yard rushers. The 8-8 team was an odd case, becuase Tennessee opened 0-6 and had to climb back. Four of those teams fit the same mold, cruddy QBs, almost no other runners and coaches content to run their best guy into the ground. The 2003 Ravens were hardly the example for winning football. The outlier is Davis' Broncos, but how soon we forget, that 2,000 was gained through a push solely for numbers. Shanahan gave Davis the ball 29 times for 178 yards (his fourth- and third most for the season) in a meaningless Week 17 game against Seattle.

Now I look at it like this, 2,000 receiving is more impressive simple because more things have to come together for it to happen and defenses have more ability to stop it. A defense can roll coverages more, and in someways dictate who gets thrown to. If a coach wants to hand the ball off 30 times a game, the defense can't stop it. Of course they can walk extra guys into the box, but that gives the runner (one we imagine going for 2,000) a chance for big runs, since the last lines of defense are walking up into the box (I don't see the receivers having such an edge when keyed on).

With the subject of garbage time, it's interesting becuase receivers and runners have such different relationships with garbage time. Receivers get stats when their team is down big, RBs when their team is up big. No one bats an eye when a runner goes 80 yards with his team up 25 points, but if a receiver catches an 80-yard pass to cut a lead from 21 to 14, those numbers are considered tainted somehow.

In the end I think 2,000 is at this point more impressive, becuase you need a lot of outside factors, and again, opponents can dare QBs to throw elsewhere in a way they can't with runners. Now is having a 2,000-yard receiver great winning football? Nope. But having a 2,000 back is hardly symptomatic of a great team.

 

They're both extremely impressive, but I give the edge to the runner because of what a joke passing defense has become. And running is just so much more of a grind on the body.

The Lions' suckage created Stat Padford at QB. A healthy CJ on that kind of team was bound to put up huge numbers.

 

Calvin Johnson was better last season. That said, the question was which 2,000-yard milestone is more impressive.

 

If it's not such a big deal to get 2,000 receiving yards nowadays, why hasn't anyone else ever even approached it? In the past 10 years, Marvin Harrison is the only other player to reach 1,700 receiving yards in a season and only Harrison, Torry Holt and Randy Moss (once each) have reached 1,600.

It is not a lot of incompletions. 117 of 190 is a .616 completion percentage. Matthew Stafford's season completion percentage is .600. So that's right about what you'd expect.

 

People keep saying that a 2,000-yard receiver must not be a big deal because the Lions are 4-11. They aren't 4-11 because of their offense - it is because they've given up more points than anyone else in the NFC.

If Johnson gets there, I'll have covered a 2,000-yard rushing season and a 2,000-yard receiving season. Barry Sanders did it with an offense that had two 1,000-yard receivers. Megatron is going to do it with no rusher over 800 yards and no other receiver over 600.

Is he is a favorable situation to put up a big yardage total? Yep. But so have a lot of other guys in NFL history, and no one has come close to doing this.

 

Since 2,000 yards receiving has never been done before, it has to be more impressive.

But...

Who would you rather have for the playoffs? All Day or Megatron?

And those are two great nicknames.

 

The general question aside, does anyone think Johnson reaching 2,000 would be more impressive than Peterson doing so?

 

Lions down 17 so Megatron is cleared for his 150 yards. He has 23 now.

 

They are also 4-11 because they can't run the ball and operate the most one-dimensional offense in the league.
They are a very soft team.
It's amazing that the team with the dirtiest guys plays the least physical brand of football in the league.

 

Coming off the injury he had, Peterson, and it's not even close.

 

And when was the last time an NFL player averaged 6.0 ypc and had 300 or more carries?

OJ Simpson did it once in 1973 and Jim Brown almost did it, but that seems to be the list.

 

That's a good point. Barry Sanders did it in 1997, his 2,000-yard season. Brown would have done it if he had 16 games instead of 14, as he finished nine carries short of 300. No other player to average 6 yards a carry even topped Jamaal Charles' 230 carries in 2010.