Today's Top 10: Best Wide Receivers

1. Jerry Rice - Does he really need explaining?
2. Don Hutson - If the game had been as pass-oriented in his day, might have put up numbers no one, including Rice, would have touched.
3. Steve Largent - Too slow, too small, yet always open and always making plays.
4. Cris Carter - The hands were that good, and he was good a lot long with the Vikings than he was mediocre in Philly.
5. Raymond Berry - No one got more out of less.
6. Paul Warfield - How frightening was it to know that his mere presence made his team's running game better? Stats did NOT tell his story.
7. Fred Biletnikoff - Perfectionist and hands rivaled Carter's.
8. Lance Alworth - Some will argue this is too low on the list. But anyway ...
9. Marvin Harrison - Yeah, his QB is likely headed to Canton. System, schmystem. The ability to be almost telepathic with Peyton Manning and roll up those numbers is no accident.
10. Art Monk - Took Canton long enough, didn't it?

I want to put Sterling Sharpe on this list so badly - If only his neck had held up ...

Other honorable mention: Elroy Hirsch, John Stallworth, James Lofton, Don Maynard, Charlie Joiner

 

I'm sorry, I know they are assholes but Randy Moss and T.O. are better than about three quarters of every list I've seen and I'd venture to say both probably have career stats to be in these conversations -- particularly T.O. -- for those of you who are into handing out lifetime achievement awards to stat compilers.......

 

Irvin, Moss & Owens are all not in your top 15? Is there a conduct section to the grading?

 

Complete jerks do hurt their causes. Understand that's upsetting both you and Zag, but I have no use for Moss, who takes plays off and comes across as a horrible teammate. So he makes the occasional great play ... so does Steve Smith and he won't be anywhere near this list until he does what he has for at least another five years and learns how to control his temper and mouth.

Half of Moss is better than the 10 best in the history of the game? No.

Michael Irvin shoved off more than anyone and got away with it time and again. I shoved him off my list. Too bad. My perogative.

And Owens? Only if this were top 10 self-serving whores.

 

I think Moss's reputation for taking half the plays off is way overstated.

And T.O. may be a self-serving whore -- he is one the best to ever play the position and he's showed up big-time on some of the biggest stages his team has played on.

 

Moss' shortcomings may be a bit overdone. Maybe I expect too much. But if Moss fulfilled his considerable potential, he could be No. 1. Jerry Rice doesn't possess Moss' gifts. Moss doesn't possess 1/1,000th of Rice's work ethic.

Owens drops entirely too many passes, passes on too much blame and blames everyone else for it. I stand by my Top 10 list, but feel free to continue hammering away.

And for someone who continuously tries to hammer the rest of us for handing out spots for stats, aren't you a little overeager to tilt lists toward modern players? There were great players before our time, too.

 

I guess, but it makes it hard to take you that seriously on this. Are you disqualifying OLs who got away with holds, or CBs who got their shoves in?

 

Packers version

1. Hutson
2. Lofton
3. Sterling Sharpe
4. Antonio Freeman
5. Billy Howton
6. Donald Driver
7. Carroll Dale
8. Boyd Dowler
9. Robert Brooks
10. Max McGee

 

Yes there were great players before our time -- and there are also great players NOW -- and I think I've proposed two modern players -- Owens and Moss and I said Fitzgerald is as good as any of those players on that list. That is three that I can recall.

I mean seriously -- Fitzgerald is 6-foot-4, fast, strong, unbelievable hands and now he even has post-season dominance to add to his resume and everything everything else -- are you telling me with a straight face that you'd take Steve Largeant -- all 5-foot-10 of him or whatever the hell he was over Fitzgerald?

 

Larry Fitzgerald was good long before he started single-handedly wrecking teams in the playoffs. He was that polished during his college days at Pittsburgh, and might have been the most polished, ready-for-the-NFL wideout drafted in the last 5-7 years.

But putting him on the lists now looks reactionary. It's like saying for good coffee, go to Starbucks. Not exactly original, and Fitz hasn't done it over a long-enough period of time to be on any Top 10 list given that the NFL has been around almost 90 years.

Steve Largent continued to do what he did for more than a decade. He was the sort that no one could believe could get open because he was too slow and too small. Yet he continued to get open. Over that long a period of time, that was no accident.

In summary, Fitz has a really good chance to crack this list. But not yet. The only current receiver I put on there is Marvin Harrison. When Larry Fitzgerald puts in another five years at the level in which he's now playing, we can revisit this. Not until then.

 

Again -- then call it a lifetime achievement award - and it isn't reactionary given that Fitzgerald's body of work is now four years old.

It is the Gale Sayers argument -- or better yet the Jim Brown argument -- if you are that good, you are that good and he is that good.

 

Bengals version

1. Chad Johnson
2. Issac Curtis
3. Chris Collinsworth
4. T.J. Houshmandzadeh
5. Carl Pickens
6. Eddie Brown
7. Tim McGee
8. Darnay Scott
9. Charlie Joiner
10. Steve Kreider