NFL Week 8 In Review...

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Ask me who the best receiver in NFL history is, and my answer is Jerry Rice, and no active receiver is close. So please understand that I’m not suggesting that Calvin Johnson has had a better career than Jerry Rice.

But I want to ask a different question: Has anyone — even the immortal Jerry Rice– ever played the wide receiver position better than Calvin Johnson is playing it right now?

With all due respect to Rice, I believe the answer to that question is no. The level of play Megatron has achieved over the last few years exceeds that of any wide receiver in the history of the game, even including Jerry Rice at his best.

From the start of the 2011 season through yesterday’s insane 14-catch, 329-yard game against the Cowboys, Johnson has 4,466 receiving yards. Over the best 2.5-season stretch of Rice’s career (the second half of 1993 and all of 1994 and 1995), he had 4,102 receiving yards. Johnson had 1,964 receiving yards last year, breaking Rice’s NFL single-season record. Johnson now has topped 200 yards six times in his last 27 games, counting the playoffs. Rice topped 200 yards five times in 332 career games, counting the playoffs.

But I don’t want to go too far down the statistical comparisons because there are a lot of respects in which the stats don’t tell the story. Johnson’s numbers are inflated by the fact that he’s playing in a better passing era than Rice was, and also by the fact that the Lions are a worse team than Rice’s 49ers were, which means they’re throwing late in games a lot more than Rice’s 49ers were. The flip side of that is, Rice was catching passes from Hall of Famers (Joe Montana early in his career, Steve Young starting in 1991) and had excellent teammates like John Taylor, Ricky Watters and Brent Jones preventing the defense from putting everything into stopping him. Johnson is catching passes from Matthew Stafford, who’s a promising young quarterback but nowhere near the type of passer that Montana and Young were, and this year’s arrival of Reggie Bush marks the first time Johnson has ever had a top-flight talent playing with him on the Lions’ offense.

So aside from stats, what makes me say Johnson is playing better football now than Rice ever did? It mostly comes down to their physical differences. The 6-foot-5, 236-pound Johnson makes plays that the 6-foot-2, 200-pound Rice did not. Rice was a genius for running perfect routes and getting open, but Johnson is so physically imposing that he makes plays even when he’s not open. The catches like Johnson’s 50-yard touchdown last week against the Bengals, when Stafford launched the ball deep into the end zone and Johnson went up and grabbed it despite being surrounded by three Bengals, are the plays that no one else at the wide receiver position has made.

And games like Johnson’s performance on Sunday are the games that no one else at the wide receiver position has had. How can Johnson, the guy every defensive coordinator in the NFL knows he has to stop, catch 87.5 percent of the passes thrown to him for 20.6 yards per attempt, as he did on Sunday? The answer is that he’s playing the wide receiver position right now better than anyone has ever played it.

This ain't me. Some guy from pft
 
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MPire said:
You can tell who are the young cats in here for people to state that Calvin will go down as being better than Jerry Rice.

Jerry Rice's work ethic is and always will be UNMATCHED, period. This is coming from a guy who hates the 49ers with a passion due to the fact that my brother is a die hard 49ers fan and is the reason I'm a cowboys fan to begin with. Jerry Rice was not physically gifted; Jerry Rice did not have top end speed; but the guy MASTERED the WR position and caught EVERYTHING.

A lot of what Calvin is doing is based on his talent and natural physical gifts (6'5 240?). That's not to take ANYTHING away from Calvin because he is at this point undisputed the best WR in the league. However, he has a VERY long ways to go before we start making the assumption he will go down as being better than Jerry Rice.

Lets see what happens when age catches up to him and some of his natural gifts start to slip and he loses a step.

Despite my antics about The Rapist (Kobe), this is one thing I've always admired about him. As he got older, he realized he couldn't do the things he could normally do and started to perfect his craft in other ways to make up for his natural abilities starting to slip.
Click to expand...

Repped for best post of the week.
For both the Calvin/Jerry analysis and the Kobe respect. :pimp:
 
Oh don't get me wrong. I thought Brady was acting like a little punk too. I just don't accept whining from any adults. When I whining, I mean repeated, emotional complaining in an immature manner.
 
Rice did more with less. With all this talk about how great of a specimen Megatron is, I think Moss is the most talented WR who ever played.


Megatron is great, the best in the league. Too early to talk about GOAT.
 
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Calvin Johnson will be the greatest of all-time in my opinion. I said it again and I'm not a "young cat." I think if anything, people need to realize that th stars of yesteryear, when we were growing up, can be moved off the top spot. It's always happened. Michael Jordan may not forever be looked at as the best...Same with Rice, Montana and all the like.

Because Jerry Rice worked hard and worked with less given talent doesn't give him an entitlement for forever being the greatest of all-time. So long as the job gets done, what the hell does it matter if one used mastery of nuances vs. the other who simply was unstoppable? Johnson probably won't master the position like Rice, but it's unfair to not give him the chance to master the game to the best that he can, which still may be more than ample enough to continue to get the job done.

SB rings for a receiver is a dead argument. There's nothing there.
 
Last edited:
MPire said:
You can tell who are the young cats in here for people to state that Calvin will go down as being better than Jerry Rice.

Jerry Rice's work ethic is and always will be UNMATCHED, period. This is coming from a guy who hates the 49ers with a passion due to the fact that my brother is a die hard 49ers fan and is the reason I'm a cowboys fan to begin with. Jerry Rice was not physically gifted; Jerry Rice did not have top end speed; but the guy MASTERED the WR position and caught EVERYTHING.

A lot of what Calvin is doing is based on his talent and natural physical gifts (6'5 240?). That's not to take ANYTHING away from Calvin because he is at this point undisputed the best WR in the league. However, he has a VERY long ways to go before we start making the assumption he will go down as being better than Jerry Rice.

Lets see what happens when age catches up to him and some of his natural gifts start to slip and he loses a step.

Despite my antics about The Rapist (Kobe), this is one thing I've always admired about him. As he got older, he realized he couldn't do the things he could normally do and started to perfect his craft in other ways to make up for his natural abilities starting to slip.
Click to expand...
Key word being MIGHT in my case and you say young cats like there aren't sports writers over 40 saying the same thing. I really hope you're right though.

Go look at his Georgia Tech highlights and look at the times he had to adjust to poorly thrown balls by Reggie Ball. Now imagine if he had an elite QB like Joe Montana and Steve Young.
 
Calvin Johnson has been in the league 7 years and still has never played with another offensive pro bowler or all pro.
 
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