Jerry Rice catches a lot of flak #OnHere for being weird, corny, etc. and rightfully so, but I’ve seen a lot of revisionist history regarding his career and people claiming he isn’t actually the GOAT. This is incorrect. He is. Allow me to provide some context:

Jerry Rice has the most receiving yards of all time (22895). Terrell Owens is 2nd (15934). For those of you who are bad at math, that’s a 6,961 yard difference, which is the difference between TO and the #62 receiver of all time, Fred Belitnikoff.

Fitz will probably pass TO for #2 all time next year (he’s 400 back of TO). Fitz would need to average 1225 yards for the next SIX years to surpass Rice.

Rice played 20 seasons in the NFL. If you bisect his career into two 10 season halves, he would rank #28 all time (11,776 yards) and #34 all time (11,119 yards); essentially, he mirrored Calvin Johnson’s career to start, and then matched Chad Johnson’s career on the back end.

Some people would argue that Moss is the GOAT. Rice’s single season receiving yardage high (1848) was 216 yards more than Moss’s single season high. (Calvin Johnson beat them both with 1964). Rice had 6 seasons with at least 1480 yards. Moss had 2.

Moss has the record for TD’s in a season with 23, but Rice had 22 in a season.

And he did in strike-shortened 12 game span. That’s silly.

“Rice only played with HOF-level QBs and it padded his stats!”

#WellActually No. In 1986 (Rice’s 2nd season), Montana suffered a back injury that kept him out 8 games. Jeff Kemp started 6 and Mike Moroski started 2. In those 8 games, Rice caught 40 passes for 829 yds and 9 TDs.

Extrapolating those figured into a 16 game season, Rice would have gone for 80-1640-18 TDs, which would have been by far best in the league that year.

Steve Bono (another HOFer, right?) started 6 games for the 49ers in 1991. Rice caught 33 balls for 415 yards and 4 TDs.

Prorated over 16 games, that would equal 88-1107-11, good for 4th, 8th, and 5th in the league that season. With Steve Bono as his starting QB...

Steve Young missed 4 starts in 1996. With Elvis Grbac starting, Rice went 27-322-5. Prorated for a full season, Rice would have caught 108 balls for 1288 yards and 20 TDs (the best that season was 14).

So, in 1.5 seasons/24 games with backups as starters (Grbac 9; Kemp 6; Bono 6; Moroski 2; Cavanaugh 1), Rice caught 134 balls for 2,177 yards & 23 TDs, which averages out to be on season of 89 catches, 1451 yards, & 16 TDs, which is better than basically anyone else’s career high

Mind you that this is all before the NFL changed the rules on horsecollaring ballcarriers and basically outlawed hitting WRs going over the middle. Rice is a weird dude, but he’s the best WR to ever play the game, and the numbers dictate that it isn’t particularly close, either.

Did NOT expect this thread to take off, but it kind of did, so only fair to point out that I can’t take credit for researching any of the info provided. Source that I basically copied here: reddit.com/r/nfl/comments…