No, Terrell Owens isn’t the Best Wide Receiver in History

Owens seen praying to Jerrice, Lord of Receivers

Today I was made aware of a posting on Bleacher Report in which Terrell Owens was touted as the best Wide Receiver in history. The article asserts that Jerry Rice isn’t as good of a receiver because he benefited from having a better team around him. The writer asserts Jerry Rice isn’t as good as his numbers indicate because Ronnie Lott played safety. This is literally a thing he wrote. In complete seriousness.

He then goes on to completely disrespect Donovan McNabb, who was better than any QB Randy Moss had outside of Tom Brady when comparing him to Steve Young.

After that he triples down by asserting Owens’ All-Pro nods as actual reasons why TO is better than multiple Hall of Fame players. Maybe if the All-Pro roster compared more than what the players did relative to each other that would be a relevant fact, but it doesn't, so it isn't.

After all this, he quadruples down and cites Owens’ 2010, a year he played with Chad Johnson/Ochocinco and Carson Palmer as the reason why Owens was great. The writer noted that Jerry Rice was disqualified as the GOAT because of his supporting cast, and that TO did it all without the same, then he goes and cites the year he had two great players at QB and opposite him at WR. He cites that the receiver was on pace to recreate his best season (2001, according to him) when Owens had his 2010 shortened due to injury. Sure. Except 2001 wasn’t TO’s best season. I’d put that at 2007, where he had 15 TDs and 90 yards per game on 85 receptions or 2000, when TO had 104 yards per game and 13 TDs. So sure, 2010 was just as good as his best season, 2001, as long as you believe “best season” is code for “best fantasy season because he scored more touchdowns,” and even then it wasn’t his best fantasy season.

He finalizes his argument by talking about Owens’ productivity and long career. All while discounting the fact that Jerry Rice played so long he almost twice as old as some of his teammates his final year.

His argument makes no sense whatsoever and his “points” are completely disjointed, garbled nonsense. Especially since he ignores one massive, massive factor when asserting that TO is the best, and it is a point that any good baseball analyst (yes, baseball) will tell you: Terrell Owens played in one of the friendliest passing game environments ever, just behind the current one.

In baseball they are called “Run Scoring Environments,” and they have names we all know. Dead Ball Era. Steroids Era. Expansion Era. Dilution of talent, changes in rules and other outside factors changed what an “average” baseball player could do at the plate. All you have to do is look at passing and receiving totals over the last decade to see that Owens benefitted from one of the best “Run Scoring Environments” for passing games in a long, long time.

And he wasn’t even one of the best receivers of that era. Terrell Owens’ 2000 season was the most yards of his career, ranked 51st of all time. I am going to use this fact to show two very different things. First, since 2000, that is the 28th best receiving season. For those that are curious, he also owns #70, #109 and #169 of all-time (only the top 250 are ranked). In the current increased yard-totaling environment, TO doesn’t even come close to posting the best single-season numbers.

Second: Jerry Rice has eight of the top 250 receiving season of all-time, including #2, 24, 36, 37, 38 and 46. TO’s best season would be Jerry’s seventh-best. All of these were done in much lower passing environments. One way to track how much better Rice was than TO that accounts for their different passing environments could be, perhaps, percentage of total passing yards during their career versus the rest of the league? Well, Jerry Rice owns that hands-down. During Rice’s career, he accounted for 1.18% of all the receiving yards in the NFL. During TO’s career, he accounted for just about 1.01%. This, by the way, includes Rice’s garbage twilight years and his shortened two game season. Remove the two game season and everything after his age 37 season (the year TO “retired”) and you get an incredible 1.3% of all receiving yards during his time in the NFL. In his best seasons relative to the rest of the league, Jerry Rice accounted for over 1.7% of the league’s yards (twice). In TO’s two best seasons, he accounted for about 1.4% (again, twice). TO’s peak seasons compared to his peers was just slightly better than Rice’s “cleaned up” career averages.

Also did you notice I barely mentioned Moss? The case of TO vs. Jerry is so strong in the case of Jerry I don’t even need to bring up any other receivers. Rice is the hands-down GOAT and all others are pure pretenders to the throne.

That includes you, Terrell.

(and I haven’t forgotten about my positional reviews, RB/FB is just so depressing it’s hard to get through it)