NFL 10,000 Yard Receivers: 2012-2015

In this six-part series, I'm going through NFL history to write about every receiver with at least 10,000 career receiving yards. This is part five. Previous posts:

Part one (Maynard, Alworth, H.Jackson, Joiner, Largent, Lofton, Morgan, Monk, Rice)
Part two (Ellard, Clark, Reed, Fryar, Irvin, Carter, T.Brown, Rison)
Part three (Bruce, J.Smith, Harrison, Sharpe, Owens, McCardell, R.Smith, R.Moss)
Part four (K.Johnson, Holt, Galloway, Muhammad, Gonzalez, Mason, Ward, Ch.Johnson, Wayne, S.Smith, Driver)

In this post, I'll cover the 10,000-yard receivers who hit the milestone from 2012-15.

Larry Fitzgerald
Arizona Cardinals, 2004-20
1,432 receptions, 17,492 yards, 12.2 avg, 904 first downs, 121 TD
10,000 yards in: 2012, Week 6
1 consensus All-Pro, 3 AP All-Pro, 11 Pro Bowls, 2010s All-Decade Team, 100th Anniversary Team

Larry Fitzgerald ranks 2nd all-time in receiving yards and first downs, 6th in receiving touchdowns, and he made more Pro Bowls than any wide receiver except Jerry Rice. He was elected to the 2010s All-Decade Team, even though his best years were mostly in the '00s, and he was chosen to the NFL 100 team. Next month, he will be elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame on the first ballot.

Fitzgerald had great size, at 6-foot-3 and 220 pounds, and a strong vertical, so he regularly beat defenders by catching the ball over his man even when he was covered. Fitzgerald was also a superior blocker, one of the best blocking WRs of his generation. What most distinguishes him, though, is that Fitzgerald is in the discussion for the greatest hands of all time.

Fitzgerald remained remarkably productive over a long career. He had nine 1,000-yard seasons^[1], eleven 900-yard seasons^[2], and sixteen 700-yard seasons.^[3] Fitzgerald had four 1,400-yard seasons ^[4] and five years of double-digit TDs, and twice tied for the league lead in receiving TDs.

Fitzgerald never led the NFL in yards or first downs, and he was first-team All-Pro only once. In his whole career, Fitzgerald received 48½ All-Pro votes from the Associated Press.^[5] Antonio Brown got more votes than that three times, and many of Fitzgerald's contemporaries got more than twice as many votes.^[6] He never got a plurality, never got votes from even half of the panel, and was never considered the best WR in football.^[7]

But his consistency and longevity were extraordinary, he did reach great heights — especially in the playoffs^[8] — and he was a great teammate, one of the most respected players of his generation. In the summer of 2019, I named Fitzgerald the 113th-greatest player in the history of professional football. I have always tried to rate active players conservatively, and I think I might sneak Fitz into the top 100 now.

Andre Johnson
Houston Texans, 2003-14; Indianapolis Colts, 2015; Tennessee Titans, 2016
1,062 receptions, 14,185 yards, 13.4 avg, 701 first downs, 70 TD
10,000 yards in: 2012, Week 6
Hall of Fame, 2 consensus All-Pro, 4 AP All-Pro, 7 Pro Bowls

Andre Johnson was a first-round draft pick, 3rd overall, from the University of Miami, joining the Houston Texans for the second season in the history of the NFL's youngest franchise. He started all 16 games and gained more receiving yards (976) than any two teammates combined, but Houston went 5-11. The Texans didn't have a winning season until 2009, when Johnson was 28 years old, and didn't make the playoffs until 2011, his ninth professional season.

By that time, Johnson was widely regarded as the best wide receiver in football. In 2008 and 2009, he became just the second receiver in history with back-to-back 1,500-yard seasons (Marvin Harrison, 2001-02).

In '08, Johnson led all receivers by 144 yards and 13 first downs. Since first downs became an official statistic in 1991, here are the receivers to lead the NFL by double-digits:

• Michael Irvin, 1991 (+17)
• Marvin Harrison, 2002 (+23)
• Andre Johnson, 2008 (+13)
• Calvin Johnson, 2012 (+13)
• Mike Evans, 2016 (+15)
• Michael Thomas, 2019 (+14)

That's it: six times in 35 seasons.

Johnson was arguably even better the next year, this time leading all receivers by over 200 yards. That list (since 1991) is even shorter:

• Marvin Harrison, 2002 (+375)
• Andre Johnson, 2009 (+223)
• Calvin Johnson, 2012 (+366)
• Michael Thomas, 2019 (+331)
• Cooper Kupp, 2021 (+331)

In both '08 and '09, Johnson got more than twice as many All-Pro votes as the second-highest wide receiver. In 2010, he missed three games but again led the NFL in yards per game. Following an injury-shortened 2011 (seven games), he posted a career-high in receiving yardage in 2012 (1,598) and tied his career best with 79 first downs. Setting aside the injury year in 2011, during his five full seasons from 2008-13, Johnson's average stat line read: 105 receptions, 1473 yards, 71 first downs, 7 TDs. As a five-year average, that's just extraordinary.

Over the course of his career, Johnson had seven 1,100-yard seasons, including four 1,400-yard seasons. He and Julio Jones are the only players in history with three seasons of 1,550 receiving yards.

At 6'3" and 230 pounds, Johnson was big enough to play tight end, basically the same size as Shannon Sharpe. But at the NFL combine, he ran a 4.4-second 40 dash and posted a vertical jump of 39 inches. Johnson had the speed and explosiveness of a wide receiver, but he was much too big and strong for most defensive backs to contend with. He would catch jump balls they couldn't reach, outmuscle them for contested catches, and effortlessly box them out. After the catch, he was a nightmare to tackle one-on-one.

Johnson was the 3rd overall pick in the 2003 NFL Draft, and Larry Fitzgerald was the 3rd overall pick in the 2004 NFL Draft. Johnson and Fitzgerald both reached 10,000 yards on 14 October 2012, but the Cardinals played an early game, and Houston played on Sunday night, so Fitzgerald hit the milestone 6 or 7 hours before Johnson. They were the 37th and 38th players with 10,000 receiving yards.

Anquan Boldin
Arizona Cardinals, 2003-09; Baltimore Ravens, 2010-12; San Francisco 49ers, 2013-15, Detroit Lions, 2016
1,076 receptions, 13,779 yards, 12.8 avg, 689 first downs, 82 TD
10,000 yards in: 2012, Week 13
3 Pro Bowls, Offensive Rookie of the Year

In his first regular-season game, Anquan Boldin broke Hugh Taylor's 56-year-old rookie record for yardage. Boldin caught 10 passes for 217 yards and 2 TDs. He won Rookie of the Year honors, with 101 catches for 1,377 yards, both figures third-best in the NFL.

It was the first of seven 1,000-yard seasons, including 1,179 yards in 2013, when the 49ers threw the fewest passes in the NFL. The rest of the WRs on that team combined for 448 yards and 1 touchdown. Run-oriented offenses limited Boldin's statistical production in the second half of his career, but after leaving Arizona, Boldin led the Ravens and Niners in receptions and receiving yards every season for six years in a row.

Through the 2013 season, Football Perspective's Chase Stuart noted, "Larry Fitzgerald and Anquan Boldin have each played in 156 games. And they've produced nearly identical receiving numbers, with Fitzgerald at 11,367 yards and Boldin at 11,344 yards. But Boldin's teams have averaged 558 pass attempts, compared to 590 for Fitzgerald." Boldin is very underrated, because he spent the last half a dozen years of his prime on teams that never threw the ball, but he played in three straight conference championship games (2011-13), and he does have a Super Bowl ring, which his longtime teammate does not.

Boldin's hands were very good, but Fitzgerald's were basically magic. Boldin gained over 500 yards in every season of a 14-year career, but he doesn't have Fitzgerald's preposterous longevity. Boldin never got a single AP All-Pro vote — I never chose him either, and I picked three WRs every year — and Fitzgerald clearly had a higher peak. Fitzgerald was the better player. But that's a little like saying that Brahms wasn't quite as great as Tchaikovsky. Boldin was a great player. He's never been a Hall of Fame semifinalist, and he'll never be elected, but I think he probably deserves it.

Like Larry Fitzgerald and Andre Johnson, Boldin beat defenders with size. At 6'1", 220, he didn't have their height, but he was every bit as powerful. Boldin was probably the toughest receiver of his era, and he broke a ton of tackles. He was also one of the best blocking WRs of this generation.

In the 2012 playoffs, Boldin had 380 yards and 4 TDs in four games, including 104 and a touchdown in Super Bowl XLVII. He gained 1,033 yards in 14 career postseason games.

Santana Moss
New York Jets, 2001-04; Washington, 2005-14
732 receptions, 10,283 yards, 14.0 avg, 491 first downs, 66 TD
10,000 yards in: 2013
1 AP All-Pro, 1 Pro Bowl

Hey, a little fast guy! Larry Fitzgerald, Andre Johnson, and Anquan Boldin were 220+ pound behemoths who used their size and strength to beat defenders. Santana Moss was 5-foot-9½, 185-195 pounds, and ran a 4.3. As a junior at the University of Miami, he won the Big East championships in both long jump and triple jump.

A first-round draft pick of the Jets, Moss was injured as a rookie and only played five games. The next year, he was used mostly on special teams, and he was special, averaging 16.5 yards per punt return and tying for the NFL lead with 2 PR TDs. He led the Jets in receiving each of the next two seasons, then was traded to Washington for fellow speedster Laveranues Coles.

In 2005, Moss was part of perhaps the most exciting two-play comeback I've ever seen.

Washington/Dallas, at that time, was possibly the greatest rivalry in the NFL. With Dallas leading 13-0, at home, and under 4:00 left to play, Moss caught 39-yard and 70-yard TDs to give Washington a 14-13 victory — against their biggest rival, on Monday night, in front of a national audience.

Moss went on to gain 1,483 yards that season, 2nd-most in the NFL, and he was named All-Pro. That included 600 yards after the catch, partly because if Moss had a step on the defender he wasn't getting caught, but also because the team threw him a lot of hitches and screens, banking on his ability to make plays with the ball. Moss, who also scored 3 punt return TDs in his career, was electric with the ball in his hands. He wasn't a tackle-breaker like Johnson and Boldin, but he had underrated toughness and could fight through weak contact and arm tackles.

Moss has very similar receiving stats to Packers hero Donald Driver, who surpassed 10,000 yards in 2011.

Like Driver, Moss was a respected locker room leader. However, he had a nasty mouth when dealing with referees. Moss drew multiple unsportsmanlike conduct penalties for things he said, and even got tossed out of a game in 2014 for mouthing off to Jeff Triplette's incompetent circus of zebras. Perusing the database at Quirky Research, I was only able to find two other players this century who were ejected for purely verbal reasons (DeAngelo Hall and Mike Evans).

Unlike Driver, Moss did not gain 97% of his receiving yards from HOF QBs. Instead, most of his yardage came from Jason Campbell, who was addicted to checkdowns, Mark Brunell, who was 35 and nearing the end of the line, and Chad Pennington, a smart and accurate QB who had a wet noodle for an arm and couldn't manage the downfield bombs that were Moss' greatest strength.

Jason Witten
Dallas Cowboys, 2003-17, 2019-20
1,228 receptions, 13,046 yards, 10.6 avg, 664 first downs, 74 TD
10,000 yards in: 2014, Week 5
2 consensus All-Pro, 4 AP All-Pro, 11 Pro Bowls