Top 10 WRs in the league

[RaidersAreOne]

Adams is still an elite #1 WR and should be in most peoples top 5 at the worst. He put up 103 / 1,144 / 8 TD's with arguably the worst starting QB duo and playcallers. 

That is damn impressive.

[nagahide13]

Tier 1

Jefferson and Tyreek

Tier 2

Chase and Ceedee

Tier 3

AJ Brown, ARSB, Adams, Evans, Puka

 

[El Ramster]

10 hours ago, nagahide13 said:

Tier 1

Jefferson and Tyreek

Tier 2

Chase and Ceedee

Tier 3

AJ Brown, ARSB, Adams, Evans, Puka

 

Another year and Amon goes up another tier. He has a case for this year tbh, specially if he has another great post season game. If he does swap him places with CEE Dee. 

 

10 hours ago, RaidersAreOne said:

Adams is still an elite #1 WR and should be in most peoples top 5 at the worst. He put up 103 / 1,144 / 8 TD's with arguably the worst starting QB duo and playcallers. 

That is damn impressive.

Yeah but that’s only 67 yards per game

breaking it down. Do we reward him for bad QB play when he was the one that decided to leave GB? He got Carr outed in a way because things didn’t work out. The WR position has never been deeper. You have 20-25 guys who could easily make the top 10

this year and you’ll have a hard time arguing. 
Next year he should be better for sure. 

[Soggust]

Let me ask you guys something - 

WR is arguably the most support-dependent position in football. It doesn't matter how fast you are, how good your cuts are, or how well you play if the ball isn't where it needs to be, when it needs to be there. While a QB might rely on the combined effect of many positions, WRs are incredibly dependent on their QB play mostly.

So, if we agree that "its easy to put up stats with elite support", then why do we have Ja'Marr Chase over D.J. Moore? The only year Chase didn't have elite support, he was outproduced by Moore (2023) and remember - we are also comparing the extremes here to dog poop QB play (a stray at Fields, sry).

----- also another slightly related idea ------

Picture Ja'Marr Chase in a vacuum in your mind. 

What's his healthy stat line? 

Is he a 1450 and 13 kind (top 5) kind of player? Or is he REALLY  a 1200 and 7 (borderline top 10) WR who has just been propped up by elite support, as we saw when he had average QB play this year?

Like, when we think of "who a player really is", are we judging them by their best face forward? Or are we judging them by what we think their hypothetical value would be if they had average support? Would people take me seriously if I suggested half the starters in the league could step in with Burrow at QB and Higgins taking pressure off the other side and put up Ja'Marrs numbers, even though I can't really quantify that? Seems like "of course not".

 Asking for my friend Brock.

Edited January 30 by Soggust

[El Ramster]

6 hours ago, Soggust said:

Let me ask you guys something - 

WR is arguably the most support-dependent position in football. It doesn't matter how fast you are, how good your cuts are, or how well you play if the ball isn't where it needs to be, when it needs to be there. While a QB might rely on the combined effect of many positions, WRs are incredibly dependent on their QB play mostly.

So, if we agree that "its easy to put up stats with elite support", then why do we have Ja'Marr Chase over D.J. Moore? The only year Chase didn't have elite support, he was outproduced by Moore (2023) and remember - we are also comparing the extremes here to dog poop QB play (a stray at Fields, sry).

----- also another slightly related idea ------

Picture Ja'Marr Chase in a vacuum in your mind. 

What's his healthy stat line? 

Is he a 1450 and 13 kind (top 5) kind of player? Or is he REALLY  a 1200 and 7 (borderline top 10) WR who has just been propped up by elite support, as we saw when he had average QB play this year?

Like, when we think of "who a player really is", are we judging them by their best face forward? Or are we judging them by what we think their hypothetical value would be if they had average support? Would people take me seriously if I suggested half the starters in the league could step in with Burrow at QB and Higgins taking pressure off the other side and put up Ja'Marrs numbers, even though I can't really quantify that? Seems like "of course not".

 Asking for my friend Brock.

The beautiful things is that we will never have to know. He’ll always have Burrow. Chase has a certain rare skill set that pops out. He’s just more electric and watching them both(eye test) you can tell they’re levels to this. Moore is a solid 2, Chase has been a 1

since he came in. The things he did to the chiefs not many can do. 

[nagahide13]

If Garrett Wilson had a QB I think he'd easily be top 10. Receivers can't be as good without good QB play, we all know that. But it's also impossible to analyze players in a vacuum since that vacuum doesn't exist... All we have is the actual data. I think most of us make small allowances for QB play, but for the most part we just kind of lump QB play in with "potential". Garrett Wilson could potentially be a top 3 receiver, but obviously can't be currently due to situation.

I'd also argue that while Fields is holding Moore back, it's not a lot. He's a 1 read QB and Moore happens to be his first read most of the time.

Edited January 30 by nagahide13

[Soko]

7 hours ago, Soggust said:

Let me ask you guys something - 

WR is arguably the most support-dependent position in football. It doesn't matter how fast you are, how good your cuts are, or how well you play if the ball isn't where it needs to be, when it needs to be there. While a QB might rely on the combined effect of many positions, WRs are incredibly dependent on their QB play mostly.

So, if we agree that "its easy to put up stats with elite support", then why do we have Ja'Marr Chase over D.J. Moore? The only year Chase didn't have elite support, he was outproduced by Moore (2023) and remember - we are also comparing the extremes here to dog poop QB play (a stray at Fields, sry).

----- also another slightly related idea ------

Picture Ja'Marr Chase in a vacuum in your mind. 

What's his healthy stat line? 

Is he a 1450 and 13 kind (top 5) kind of player? Or is he REALLY  a 1200 and 7 (borderline top 10) WR who has just been propped up by elite support, as we saw when he had average QB play this year?

Like, when we think of "who a player really is", are we judging them by their best face forward? Or are we judging them by what we think their hypothetical value would be if they had average support? Would people take me seriously if I suggested half the starters in the league could step in with Burrow at QB and Higgins taking pressure off the other side and put up Ja'Marrs numbers, even though I can't really quantify that? Seems like "of course not".

 Asking for my friend Brock.

Thing is, do you need an elite QB to put up elite WR production? How many elite QBs did Andre Johnson play with? Or Steve Smith? Or DeAndre Hopkins? Davante Adams had an as-good-if-not-better season from a production standpoint with Derek Carr as he did with Aaron Rodgers. Tyreek Hill downgraded at QB, and his production exploded. Amari Cooper had a career year with a mix of Watson/rookie/Walker/Flacco. Mike Evans had more/at minimum, equal production with Baker Mayfield this year than he ever had with Tom Brady. We’ve also seen a plethora of receivers produce jack with elite QBs. So I’ve got serious push back with some of the pillars of your discussion. Obviously, overall, strong QB play is more of a help than a hindrance to WR production, but it’s not always a given or perfectly correlative. 

That said, hinging how you view your WRs completely on production doesn’t always work. 

[El Ramster]

15 minutes ago, Soko said:

Thing is, do you need an elite QB to put up elite WR production? How many elite QBs did Andre Johnson play with? Or Steve Smith? Or DeAndre Hopkins? Davante Adams had an as-good-if-not-better season from a production standpoint with Derek Carr as he did with Aaron Rodgers. Tyreek Hill downgraded at QB, and his production exploded. Amari Cooper had a career year with a mix of Watson/rookie/Walker/Flacco. Mike Evans had more/at minimum, equal production with Baker Mayfield this year than he ever had with Tom Brady. We’ve also seen a plethora of receivers produce jack with elite QBs. So I’ve got serious push back with some of the pillars of your discussion. Obviously, overall, strong QB play is more of a help than a hindrance to WR production, but it’s not always a given or perfectly correlative. 

That said, hinging how you view your WRs completely on production doesn’t always work. 

Think it’s more coaching scheme than QB play tbh. 

[Soggust]

1 hour ago, Soko said:

Thing is, do you need an elite QB to put up elite WR production? How many elite QBs did Andre Johnson play with? Or Steve Smith? Or DeAndre Hopkins? Davante Adams had an as-good-if-not-better season from a production standpoint with Derek Carr as he did with Aaron Rodgers. Tyreek Hill downgraded at QB, and his production exploded. Amari Cooper had a career year with a mix of Watson/rookie/Walker/Flacco. Mike Evans had more/at minimum, equal production with Baker Mayfield this year than he ever had with Tom Brady. We’ve also seen a plethora of receivers produce jack with elite QBs. So I’ve got serious push back with some of the pillars of your discussion. Obviously, overall, strong QB play is more of a help than a hindrance to WR production, but it’s not always a given or perfectly correlative. 

That said, hinging how you view your WRs completely on production doesn’t always work. 

Therefore, CJ Stroud and Jordan Love putting up similar stats to Purdy would tell us that you don't need elite support to get his level of QB production, right?

And instead of rewarding them for doing similar with less support, we should judge them only by their numbers, right? Because we've seen other examples of QBs throwing for 4k 30:11 with lesser help?

I actually agree with this take for the record, but I don't think most others do.

Edited January 30 by Soggust

[stl4life07]

Im still saying Kupp is the best receiver in the NFL. This season he was basically playing on one leg and clearly wasnt himself. I was listening to the Athletic podcast and Jourdan Rodriguez said people dont know how much that triple crown season too out of Kupp. No receiver will do what Kupp did in 2021 from start to finish. And I still say that if McVay didnt pull his starters in the 4th quarter in some of those games Kupp wouldve easily broken the receiving yards record.

I think a healthy Kupp next season bounces back to show everyone he is the best receiver in the league. 

[nagahide13]

I think Kupp is actually a perfect example of scheme and QB making a guy look way better. He's 30, has 1 elite season and 1 really good season. He's missed about 20% of his games with injury.

Coulda been Bobby Trees...

[Soko]

32 minutes ago, Soggust said:

Therefore, CJ Stroud and Jordan Love putting up similar stats to Purdy would tell us that you don't need elite support to get his level of QB production, right?

And instead of rewarding them for doing similar with less support, we should judge them only by their numbers, right? Because we've seen other examples of QBs throwing for 4k 30:11 with lesser help?

I actually agree with this take for the record, but I don't think most others do.

To the first point, sometimes. Sometimes you will, sometimes you won’t. As a rule of thumb, it isn’t a necessity, but you also wont expect a guy to throw for 5,000 yards to Adam Thielen, DJ Chark, and Laviska Shenault. 

To the second point…sort of? I’m not one to say Player X produced more than Player Y, therefore Player X is the better player - necessarily. Like, by most measures, Dak had a better/more productive season than Mahomes, but he isn’t even in the same stratosphere as far as comparing the two as QBs. In that sense, no, we shouldn’t judge QBs only on their numbers. It’s not so binary that you either do/don’t require elite talent in order to produce at an elite level. It’s more of a sliding scale than a yes/no. I think crediting guys for doing the same with less, generally makes sense.

To the more central point, for me, using stats for MVP discussions is fine, but at the core of it, ability and skill exists independent of statistics. They’re not totally unrelated but they’re not totally married either. I think how good a QB is is more about their ability and consistency than it is just their numbers.

[El Ramster]

36 minutes ago, nagahide13 said:

I think Kupp is actually a perfect example of scheme and QB making a guy look way better. He's 30, has 1 elite season and 1 really good season. He's missed about 20% of his games with injury.

Coulda been Bobby Trees...

You know before this year I would have had major push back. You gotta be good too, and my god he just didn’t have a great season he had the greatest season ever. 
 

AZ was a blow out, 61 yards 1 Tuddy. 
Tampa 183 and 1 Tuddy. 
SF 142 and 2 Tuddys..

Cincy 92 and 2 Tuddies with the GW. 
 

Everyone and their mother knew where that ball was going and he could not be stopped. 
 

But he’s breaking down before our eyes. He’s shown flashes this year. But his body is just not built for the pounding. Now Sean has Puka whose basically Kupp 2.0.. You gotta be smart as we run tons of option routes and hit the open spot and have a QB who’s going to blast you with 10-20 targets a game. 😂 they’re cooking. 
 

Like Amon is really good. Why don’t you guys use him in Jet sweeps more? You’ll want him to have the ball much more. Also, he’s a slot guy as he’s not going far and deep huh? He’s such a baller. Detroit found a real gem with him. 

[Soggust]

2 minutes ago, Soko said:

Like, by most measures, Dak had a better/more productive season than Mahomes, but he isn’t even in the same stratosphere as far as comparing the two as QBs.

...

To the more central point, for me, using stats for MVP discussions is fine, but at the core of it, ability and skill exists independent of statistics. They’re not totally unrelated but they’re not totally married either. I think how good a QB is is more about their ability and consistency than it is just their numbers.

Agreed, but we know this without the need for the eye test due to history and hardware. But I'm not trying to nitpick your example because I get what you're saying that stats don't always tell the whole story of players career.

I do think stats tell the story of that persons year, though.

For example, CeeDee Lamb was a top 3 WR this year, even if I think Chase, Jefferson and Hill are better players. 

Therefore, I think it's fair to say Brock was a top 3 QB this year (MVP yearly award), even if he isn't a top 3 QB overall.

----

But my original point was more just thinking about how we don't apply the support bias in seemingly any other positions, even when on its surface, it would seem they would rely on their support even more.

Like another example might be docking Chubb for his oline. People say they do, but then they apply a realistic and reasonable 2-5% bias. And in other positions, we remember the player for what they are at their peak. What they "should be". Yet, with Purdy, it feels like support is the entire argument and it's what he "really is" if he had worse support.

I thought picking on WRs would be the right move for my example because, duh obviously, but to your point - I guess I really can't prove that good QBs make a difference.

[Soggust]

15 minutes ago, El Ramster said:

Like Amon is really good. Why don’t you guys use him in Jet sweeps more? You’ll want him to have the ball much more. Also, he’s a slot guy as he’s not going far and deep huh? He’s such a baller. Detroit found a real gem with him. 

ARSB going to last a long time in the league because every time I watch that dude there is no one within 10 yards to hit him.