NFL Non-10,000 Yard Receivers: 2016-2025

This is part six of a series profiling every player with at least 10,000 career receiving yards in the NFL and AFL. 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)
Part five (Fitzgerald, A.Johnson, Boldin, S.Moss, Witten, White, Gates, Megatron, Marshall)

This post is going to be different from the previous articles, because working on this project led me to notice something.

From 2005-15, at least one player reached the 10,000-yard career milestone every season. In those 11 seasons, 24 players topped 10k for their careers.

Then, in 2016, no one did. And in 2017, no one did.

Over the last eight seasons, 12 players have gotten to 10,000 yards for their careers. That's not a low rate, historically, but it is markedly slower than the mid-00s to the mid-10s, despite the expansion of the schedule to 17 games and the ever-growing emphasis on passing. Perhaps this is just a coincidence of chronology, without any implications for our understanding of pro football or the magnitude of career achievements. But I am struck by how many promising receivers of this generation didn't reach 10,000 yards.

Demaryius Thomas gained 1,300 yards for four seasons in a row (2012-2015). The only other players to do that, ever, are Marvin Harrison, Torry Holt, and Julio Jones. Thomas made five straight Pro Bowls, and he was All-Pro twice. He appeared to be on a historic, Hall of Fame trajectory. But his production slipped, and he retired following the 2019 season, after just 10 years in the NFL, and 237 yards shy of 10k.

Rob Gronkowski, widely considered to be the greatest tight end of all time, but oft-injured, played only 10 seasons, many of them partial, and gained just 9,286 yards in his career.

Odell Beckham was one of the most electric players of this century. He won Rookie of the Year, made the Pro Bowl in each of his first three seasons, and in each of those three seasons gained over 1,300 yards with double-digit touchdowns. He never again came with 250 yards of his previous career low, and topped out at 6 TDs in his best season thereafter. He did not play last season and is just shy of 8,000 career receiving yards.

I mentioned Michael Thomas three times in the last article. He was one of just six players since 1991 to lead the NFL in first down receptions by double-digits, and one of just five to lead in receiving yards by over 200. From 2017-19, he became one of only seven NFL players with three straight seasons of 70+ first downs. He was All-Pro twice, and in 2019 he was named AP Offensive Player of the Year, a rare honor for a receiver. After four 1,000-yard seasons, each one better than the last, he dealt with injuries and never returned to form. He played his last game in 2023 and sits at 6,569 career yards.

And those are just the most promising guys, the ones who seemed certain to reach 10k. Normally, some second-tier players, guys who will never be serious Hall of Fame candidates but who had really good careers, will get to 10,000. Players like Joey Galloway, Muhsin Muhammad, Donald Driver, Santana Moss ... very good players, but not nearly as dominant and incendiary as DT and Gronk and OBJ and Michael Thomas.

Amari Cooper made it to 10k — he'll get a full profile in the next post — and he's not going to Canton, and Brandin Cooks only needs 200 more yards, and there are a couple other guys with an outside chance, before we get to the Justin Jeffersons and Ja'Marr Chases of the next generation.

But where are the Donald Drivers of the 2010s, the guys who aren't All-Pro contenders but have half a dozen 1,000-yard seasons, stick around for a long time, and make it to five digits? T.Y. Hilton played 11 seasons and tapped out at 9,812 yards. Emmanuel Sanders lasted 12 years and retired at 9,245. Jordy Nelson only played 11 seasons, and hung up his cleats with 8,587 career yards.

Jarvis Landry was one of my favorite players, a 5'11" jitterbug who played like Gronkowski, bowling over tacklers and conceding nothing to the defense. He only lasted nine seasons, and came up short of 8,000 yards. Dez Bryant retired with 7,506 yards. Allen Robinson had three very good seasons and almost nothing else. He has 7,058 yards. Josh Gordon is an unusual case, but he averaged 117.6 yards per game in 2013, leading the NFL in yardage and earning first-team All-Pro recognition. 4,284 yards in his NFL career.

Is this dearth of 10,000-yard receivers, especially the kind who get to 10k with a bunch of good-not-great seasons, [1] a trend, [2] a temporary epidemic, or [3] a fluke?

Well, I don't think it's a fluke. Odell Beckham, Michael Thomas, and Jarvis Landry didn't even make it to 8,000 yards. In the 16-game-schedule era, how many comparably talented receivers failed to reach 10k? Sterling Sharpe, for sure, though even he got to 8k (8,134). Maybe Herman Moore? Is there anyone else the caliber of Beckham and Thomas who fell off a cliff the way they did in the early 2020s? Why might this be happening?

There are two possible explanations that I considered but feel confident in rejecting. One is salaries. Players get paid more than ever, and they don't need to play for 15 seasons to achieve financial security. Maybe the top receivers aren't playing as long because they don't need to. But these guys didn't retire in their primes. They wanted to keep going, and couldn't find a team that wanted to put them on the field when their production declined. Similar reasoning leads me to reject fears of CTE as an explanation. That would be a totally understandable reason for players to retire early, but I don't see a lot of evidence that it applies to the players we're considering.

Injuries are the most obvious explanation, but we're talking about players whose entire careers are with the defenseless receiver rule, and much better sports medicine than existed even a couple of decades ago. Why are today's players getting hurt more? Well, maybe because we've traded head injuries for lower-body injuries, and CTE for injuries that ruin athleticism and shorten careers. Maybe because every stadium now has artificial turf that maximizes speed and increases the force of collisions. Maybe because the season is 17 games now, and more teams make the playoffs, and there's more wear-and-tear on players but less time to recover. Maybe because offseason training expectations have gotten more intense, because the level of competition is so high.

That makes sense to me. And it's not just receivers. Other than quarterbacks and kicking specialists, most great players are only staying in the game for 10-12 years now. The damage done to their bodies is immense, and I imagine the mental wear-and-tear is pretty nasty, too, especially now that randos on social media can yell at you for real or perceived shortcomings, or screwing up their parlay, or whatever.

So I also don't think this is an aberration. I think it's a trend, and I believe that for the first time ever, we'll see fewer players — not more — reaching the 10,000-yard summit.

This series continues: click here for part seven, receivers who reached 10,000 yards from 2018-24.

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