Record Records - Part 1, introduction and NFL-I: Jerry Rice
Sporting achievements that will probably never be repeated or bettered, an opinion
Scrutinising sport is a funny thing. It’s a competition of physical prowess, mental toughness, team work, preparation, all that jazz that coaches go on about. But it’s hard to put a number on mental toughness, hard to precisely define how prepared an athlete is, hard to objectively state the team work at play. But we want to know these things! The inherent nature of competition drives the desire to quantify who is competing the best, and those really invested in the culture and fabric of a sport know that winning titles and medals doesn’t always reflect this. And so we get statistics, analytics, numbers based solely on output and production by the athletes, an imperfect but inescapable surrogate for what we really want.
This is why sport statistics are recorded meticulously, memorised by fans, and brandied like weapons by the zealots of megastars as credentials for their greatness. No discussion between die-hard fans on who is the greatest given athlete in their field ever gets past a few breaths before statistics are hurled back and forth, with one side quick to find cause for why a given stat isn’t relevant while simultaneously arguing the critical importance of their own supporting data. And they’re very addictive, once the habit sets in of learning, comparing, and relying on the statistics of a sport it’s very hard to discuss said sport without this numerical crutch. I think there might be another piece to write in the future on the dangers of this addiction and whether or not we could enjoy sport more if we threw off the shackles of analytics.
But that’s not what we’re doing here! No this is quite the opposite, a celebration of those in their sports that have statistical achievements so impressive I don’t think they’re likely to ever be bettered or even repeated. This by no means, as we have touched on above, is the definitive measure for how good these people (or peoples) really were at the intangibles that make their sport great. Then again, you have to be pretty great at the sport to put up these kinds of numbers. This is also by no means supposed to fulfil some perfect list of the most impressive records and statistics across the sporting world, these are just records that are interesting and incredible in my opinion, and are therefore of course very much centred on the sports that I love or pay attention to. I’m not going to be discussing Babe Ruth, Jack Nicklaus, Cristiano Ronaldo, or the 11 straight premierships by St George in the 50’s, 60’s (although holy smokes, maybe I should be).
Sport is special to society, it has been tied to our culture for as long as we’ve recorded it. And it’s special because of our attachments to it, whether that’s because of familial ties, tribalism (at times more jingoism), experience playing it, connection to a personality or narrative, and many other factors. This series of articles is focused on sports that I am attached to, so, apologies for inevitably missing some incredible record in a field I’m ignorant of. So with that said, let’s get into it! For a collection of sports I have varying degrees of interest in I will be going through a few impressive statistics or records that I believe are unlikely to be bested. I'll do my best to explain the context of what makes the achievement so impressive without boring the reader. I'll also try to rationalise why it's such an unlikely achievement to be topped. I will be focussing on a new athlete or team from a given sport for a few weeks until that sport is exhausted before moving on to the next sport. This week it’s American football and the legendary Jerry Rice.
American Football
I don't know what it is with the Americans and sports statistics (maybe deserving a piece of its own). In ascending order the three most popular, by some margin, sporting codes are: baseball, basketball, and American football, and they are all of them obsessed with stats. American football might do this to a greater pitch than any sport I’ve encountered. Basketball and baseball might dive deeper and more obsessively into particular statistics, but American football has breadth that other sports don’t due to the staggering range of specialised roles. In most team sports a player has to be good at most things in that sport, a great basketball player can defend as well as score, a great rugby player can run and offload as skillfully as tackle, even in cricket players are expected to field to an exceptional level despite being specialist bowlers or batters, and many of the former can bat and many of the latter can bowl.
But American football has done away with such poly-skilled playing requirements. Instead they suit up over 50 players for a game because they need 11 guys who just play offence, 11 guys who just play defence, another 11 guys on the “special teams” as well as backups or alternate options for many of them. And nothing is more specialised or more statistically analysed than the premier product of American rules football, the NFL. Stats recorded and used to determine player value include:
For passers: passing attempts, yards, completion %, touchdowns, interceptions
For runners: rushing attempts, yards, yards after contact, rushing touchdowns, fumbles
For receivers: targets, receptions, receiving yards, yards after catch, receiving touchdowns, fumbles
For kickers: punt yards, touch backs, field goal kicking %, number of field goals
For defenders: tackles, sacks, safeties, forced fumbles, passes defended, interceptions, turnovers returned for touchdowns
For blockers: defenders blocked, pancakes (yes that’s a thing)
For returns team: kick-offs or punts returned yards, touchdowns
Not to mention team statistics like number of first downs, points scored per game, points allowed per game, red zone efficiency, and so on. And to be honest this is just the surface level stuff. Then there are metrics like yards gained above expected, or quarter-back rating, or average separation.
To get an idea just go to the Wikiticle about NFL records: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_National_Football_League_records_(individual) and start scrolling, it’s insane.
So in a sport with such a focus on recording and comparing numbers, naturally there are some standouts worth discussing here. This week, that standout is Jerry Rice.
Jerry Rice - Career Receiving Totals
Jerry Rice, some consider the greatest American footballer ever, undoubtedly the best receiver - image taken from Harvard Business Review
The NFL is all about the pass. This has changed over the years, especially considering the very early version of the game didn’t even allow forward passes. That’s hard to imagine now, with the deep spiral pass one of the quintessential aspects of American football. This has of course led to the quarterback as the centre-piece of the offence, the leader and face of the franchise, the highest paid guy on the field. But a QB is only part of the picture, he can’t do squat if he’s on his back, and his passes are in vain if they find the grass. This is why premier blockers and receivers also get paid the big bucks. And the premier receiver of all time is Jerry Rice.
Jerry Rice was drafted in 1985 by the San Francisco 49ers, who had just won the Super Bowl as well as three years earlier, both courtesy of a quarterback you might have heard of, Joe Montana. Rice is quoted saying that going into the draft he wasn’t sure he’d even be drafted following a disappointing showing at the combine (an annual event for prospects to show off their physical prowess for hungry NFL teams). But the 49ers liked what they saw. However, as reigning champs they had the last pick of each draft round. So, they traded their 1st, 2nd, and 3rd round picks to the Patriots to move up and draft him 16th overall. He had a great season by rookie standards (49 receptions for 927 yards and 3 touchdowns), but nothing mind-blowing or record setting (except that time he broke the then franchise record for yards in a game…)
But he continued to improve, and of course playing with a QB many see as the greatest of all time didn’t hurt. Before drafting Rice, Montana had played six seasons for the 49ers, and with QBs, this is still relatively early days in a decent career. And he had more than a decent career. The interesting thing though, is that while I can say that having Montana helped Rice, it might be the other way around. Comparing the 5 seasons before to the 5 seasons after Rice was drafted Montana’s yards per game, TD’s, and QBR (that’s quarterback rating) went from 221 to 251, 21 to 23, and 92.3 to 94.9 respectively. Rice and Montana won back-to-back Super Bowls together in Rice’s 4th and 5th seasons (for Montana’s third and fourth career titles), with Montana winning MVP in one, as he had in his earlier titles, but Rice getting the honours in the other.
Montana to Rice, probably the most feared QB-WR duo in league history. Image taken from 49ers.com
The following year Montana missed the whole season to injury, and the legendary QB would never play for San Francisco again as his replacement absolutely killed it. That would be Steve Young, who while not winning nearly as many titles as his more famous predecessor, would go on to have a hall of fame career of his own, and in most statistical senses, a more impressive one. But of course he did, he had Rice catching his passes in the prime of his career! The two have the 3rd most combined touchdowns between a QB and a receiver. They won a Super Bowl together in 1995 (Rice’s 3rd title, technically true for Young as well as he had been the backup QB for the earlier wins). Rice would end up playing one more season for the 49ers after Young retired. He would then play another 4 seasons with the Raiders and Seahawks, retiring after an insane 20 seasons in the NFL. For anyone familiar with the sport, or really any professional sport, that is a crazy number.
This is especially true for wide receivers, a physically taxing position that has a huge emphasis on athleticism and speed, meaning most players in the position peak early, and then fade into retirement. Sustained success at the wideout position is quite rare, and 20 seasons is truly mind boggling.
Alright, enough background, let’s get into the stats!
Well, as mentioned above, receivers tend to have a few big years in their careers, sandwiched between the mediocrity of first inexperience and then later a decline in burst and speed. The latter can be mitigated by the best of the best through savvy route running and NFL nous. It’s this longevity that we’re talking about today. Don’t get me wrong, Rice had some phenomenal seasons, when he retired he had the record for most receiving yards in a season (stood for 17 years, broken 8 years after he retired) and most receiving touchdowns in a season (stood for 20 years, broken 3 years after he retired). But the difference compared to other great players is that he had lots of phenomenal seasons, tons of great seasons, and then a million pretty good seasons. Most receivers every year are gunning for 1000 yards, it’s the benchmark of a good season, well Rice did that a record 14 times! That’s more seasons than most receivers play in a career. His career numbers are staggering. He has the most touchdowns by some margin:
But scoring points is a team thing, getting into the red zone is key and then using your team to convert a drive into points, so receptions and receiving yards are arguably more important right, to move the ball down the field. Well check out career receptions:
Okay, still dominant, but not like with touchdowns.That said, a lot of receptions are dinky little 5 yard check downs, so what about the real meat, receiving yards. Check it out:
I mean what the hell. It’s one thing for a player to have the most career something or another, but to have every key stat for your position sewn up, and not just sewn up but miles ahead (using imperial system feels appropriate), is absolutely ludicrous.
Can anyone break his records? Well he has lots, the big ones being career receptions, career touchdowns, and career receiving yards. Career receptions? Hmm, maybe, but it would need everything to line up. Current players with more than 500 (i.e. halfway or more to that 1000 club shown above) are all at the back end of their careers. There are a few younger guys who, if they play as long as Rice did and maintain their current rate, might get there, but those are both super unlikely. Still, it’s not impossible.
Career Touchdowns? I guess it’s plausible, there might be a red zone magnet who gets every score for a team for a sustained period. But again, players in the NFL right now who are on track would need their current production to go on as is now for a decade or more, which is just so unlikely.
But that career receiving yards total, and lets not forget that this is the most important metric for a receiver, that is unbreakable. Honestly, I think this is one of the most unlikely records in sport to ever be broken. Considering there are 32 teams, and every team needs someone catching the ball, and this has gone on for decades, it says something about the difficulty in amassing large numbers in that only 50 players have ever crossed the 10,000 yards mark. But this is where longevity cruels most, as of those 50 only 28 made it 12,000, and then only 12 to 14,000, and only 2 players have cracked the 16,000. Fitzgerald retired with a whopping 17,492, but he was still 5,403 behind Rice! There are players in the hall of fame who only had 10,000 yards in a career, and the 2nd most all time is half of that again behind Rice, crazy.
That said, they are playing an extra game per season now compared to during Rice’s career, and there is a current player who is only three years into his career and absolutely smashing records: Justin Jefferson. If he maintains his current rate, and considering the extra game per year, he could catch Rice if he played a total of 15 seasons and didn’t miss a game, and didn’t drop in productivity. Yeah, right. I think Rice will wear the receiving crown for a very, very long time.