Wide receivers have never been more valuable. Fantasy football leagues have literally moved to PPR formats because wide receivers have increased in value, ironically increasing their value in the fake version of the sport. In the real sport, players like Justin Jefferson, Ja’Marr Chase, CeeDee Lamb, Puka Nacua, and Jaxson Smith-Njigba are considered on the Hall of Fame track. They are the best of the best, and they get their just due.
However, there are plenty of wide receivers who fall under the radar. Just last season, Zay Flowers, Chris Olave, and Jameson Williams all finished in the top ten in receiving yards. There are plenty of players who are considered underrated at the position today, including Terry McLaurin, Cortland Sutton, and Michael Pittman.
In the history of the league, there are way more underrated wide receivers. Who are the best of the best?
10. Michael Thomas: 2016-2023
Michael Thomas was one of the best receivers in the league, leading the NFL in receptions in consecutive years in 2018 and 2019. This wasn’t even a decade ago that this player was dominating the league. He was lifting the twilight years of a Hall of Fame quarterback. Drew Brees went to Michael Thomas more than a dozen times per game sometimes. He was the rich man’s version of Wes Welker.
In 2018, Thomas recorded 125 receptions for more than 1,400 yards and nine touchdowns. In 2019, he was even better. He had 149 catches for close to 1,800 yards and nine touchdowns. That season, he had a league-leading 91 first downs. He was an All-Pro in both seasons.
Then, his career was essentially over. Yeah, there’s a clear reason why Thomas is underrated. His peak was essentially two years. He suffered injuries in 2020, ending up with just 40 receptions. He ended up missing all of 2021, but he never hit 40 receptions again. This was a player with all the makings of a superstar who continued to dominate at all levels. Maybe he took too many hits with the way the Saints played offense. His skill was unique, and his ability to get open was untouchable. This is as unfortunate a story as we have in recent memory.
9. Sterling Sharpe: 1988-1994
Sterling Sharpe is another player who didn’t have the lengthy career he probably deserved, but he was incredible when he was on the field. Sharpe played from 1988 to 1994, just seven seasons in the league. He led the league with 90 receptions in just his second year, making his first of five Pro Bowls. He was also first-team All-Pro for the first time, and he would eventually be named one of the top wide receivers three times.
Some of the players who didn’t make three All-Pros include Julio Jones, Cris Carter, Andre Johnson, and Larry Fitzgerald. Sharpe was incredible in his era, but his impact was limited by injuries and a strange era for the Green Bay Packers. Now, eventually, he got to play with a young Brett Favre, but that took some time.
At the end of the 1994 season, Sharpe had his neck checked, and doctors found an abnormality, including looseness in the vertebrae. That doesn’t sound like something that can be worked around in the sport of football, especially in the mid-90s. He finished with 8,134 yards and 65 touchdowns in seven years. If he just played until he was 32, he wins a Super Bowl in Green Bay and likely made the Hall of Fame.
8. Billy Howton: 1952-1963
We’re not saying that Billy Howton was an all-time great, but he’s one of the few receivers of the 1950s to put up great numbers. Yes, this is one of the few times we will actually mention players before the Super Bowl era, but Howton was great at a time when receivers weren’t given the freedom to make dominance a part of his game.
When comparing Howton’s statistics against the peers of today, he’s not that impressive. He only broke 1,000 yards twice, including once in his rookie year in 1952. However, as we said before, the league was in a different place that season. Howton retired as the all-time leader in receptions and receiving yards.
His reliability as a top target made him a cornerstone of this era for two great franchises: the Green Bay Packers and, later, the Cleveland Browns. For the most part, players from this era are lost to time. It’s not like baseball, where Mickey Mantle and Willie Mays are still incredibly popular, including in the memorabilia world.
7. Donald Driver: 1999-2012
Donald Driver is beloved in Green Bay, but he doesn’t have the same weight when it comes to his career against his peers. Many would be surprised to learn that Driver finished his career with more than 10,000 yards. He was incredibly consistent for a decade, becoming a go-to player during an important era of Packers football.
Driver didn’t get his chance until he was 27 years old. He was a backup for the first three years of his career, but in his fourth season, he had more than 100 targets and broke 1,000 yards for the first time. Ironically, it was the first time he broke 400 yards in a season. From there, he broke 1,000 yards receiving in seven of the next eight seasons.
Driver stayed in Green Bay until his career ended in 2012. He was 37 years old at the time. Imagine if he had peak years when he was in his athletic prime? Driver would likely have another 3,000 yards, which would have put him in the same statistical profile as Steve Largent, Andre Reed, and DeAndre Hopkins.
6. Cliff Branch: 1972-1985
The Las Vegas/Oakland/Los Angeles Raiders are the most interesting franchise in the NFL. When you ask who is the biggest star in the history of this franchise, most would say John Madden, who was a head coach. When it comes to players, Tim Brown (who could easily be on this list), Ken Stabler, Howie Long, and Marcus Allen are the most popular names that come up. For the most part, the Raiders are the star. Raider Nation is the star. Heck, the color scheme is a bigger star than any one player.
And that’s why Cliff Branch isn’t considered a star like other great offensive players of his era. He wasn’t just a member of the three-time Super Bowl champions, but he was a main driver of their success. He was a three-time first-team All-Pro. He led the league in receiving touchdowns twice. In Super Bowl XV, he scored two touchdowns receiving. In Super Bowl XVIII, he had six catches for 94 yards and a touchdown.
Branch was quietly doing well while the Raiders built a touch guy persona. He did everything right for a team that needed a star who didn’t need the headlines. He was underrated in his time, and he remains underrated today.
5. Derrick Mason: 1997-2011
Derrick Mason is a player who has us looking at his statistics without context and wondering if he has a Hall of Fame case. Only Torry Holt, Randy Moss, and Terrell Owens had more yards in the 2000s decade. However, because he’s doing everything, teams would cover him at all costs against a Tennessee Titans team that didn’t always have other help on offense.
Mason never led the league in any statistical category, but he was as consistent as they came. He broke 1,000 yards eight times in his career. While he never had 10 touchdowns or more in a season, he did have at least seven five times. He started off as a superstar return man, but he eventually made the move to superstar wide receiver.
He stayed under the radar for years in Tennessee before heading to Baltimore to try and become a champion. It never worked out that way, but he got the most out of his career. He played for 17 years, breaking 12,000 yards in his career. Along the way, he became a locker room legend, considered one of the true good guys in the league.
4. Irving Fryar: 1984-2000
Two players in NFL history played more seasons as a receiver than Irving Fryar: Jerry Rice and Charlie Joyner. Fryar was taking passes for 17 seasons. He actually played across three different decades (80s, 90s, and 2000s). He was much more than longevity, however. He spent the majority of his career with the New England Patriots. Today, that would be great. Back then? It meant he was out of the spotlight.
He only made one Pro Bowl in nine seasons in New England. He left the Pats in 1993 to join their rivals, the Miami Dolphins. He immediately made his second and third Pro Bowls despite being 31 and 32 years old. Fryar was trying to do the most with what little he had to play with in New England, but he did much more with a better system and core offense around him.
He became a statistical phenomenon with the Philadelphia Eagles. Despite being in his mid-30s, he was averaging more than 1,200 yards in his first two years, and he combined for 17 touchdowns. If he was on either of those teams instead of the Patriots, Fryar might be a Hall of Famer. Instead, he gets to be on this list.
3. Demaryius Thomas: 2010-2019
When looking at the top receivers of the 2010s, the top three are some of the best receivers of all time. Julio Jones leads the list, followed by Antonio Brown and Larry Fitzgerald. Who would you guess is after that? Calvin Johnson? A.J. Green? Rob Gronkowski? Nope, it’s former Denver Broncos great Demaryius Thomas.
He had just under 10,000 yards in his career and 63 touchdowns. After finally breaking out in 2012, he had 1,300 yards four years in a row. There are few players who had as great of a stretch as Thomas during this era. He wasn’t doing it loudly like some of his peers, but he was doing it just as well.
Thomas was dominating alongside Peyton Manning. When a guy like Manning is in the locker room, it’s hard to grab attention. He’s the big personality, and there’s an expectation of focus that removes the biggest headline grabbers. That doesn’t mean he didn’t make big plays. Thomas famously took a Tim Tebow short pass to the house to beat the Pittsburgh Steelers in the playoffs. He helped Manning break the touchdown record, and he helped the Broncos win Super Bowl 50.
2. Rob Moore: 1990-1999
Who is Rob Moore? Many are probably asking that question, and that’s how underrated this wide receiver is. The Arizona Cardinals were basically playing in a vacuum, and most of their players felt like they were hiding under a rock. The best of them all was Moore. He played on the Cardinals from 1994-2001. Prior to that, he played for the Jets, which is a New York team by name only.
Moore registered 628 receptions for 9,368 yards and 49 touchdowns in his career. The numbers aren’t impressive on the surface, but his best quarterback in New Jersey was the non-Bengals version of Boomer Esiason. His best QB in Arizona was early career Jake Plummer (ironically, he also had Esiason in Arizona). Moore had guys like Kent Graham, Dave Krieg, Dave Brown, and Browning Nagle throwing him passes.
Moore did become a star, well, kind of. He was in one of the most popular movies of the 1990s. Footage of Moore was used in the movie Jerry Maguire, made to look like Cuba Gooding Jr’s character Rod Tidwell. We hope someone “showed him the money” for that. He definitely would have been appreciated in the wallet more if he were playing today, when fantasy and advanced analytics allowed us to take a deeper look at receivers in less-than-ideal situations.
1. Torry Holt: 1999-2009
When it comes to yards, no player had more in the first decade of the 2000s than Torry Holt. He had more than 12,000 yards in the decade. Would you believe that he had more yards that decade than Randy Moss, Terrell Owens, Marvin Harrison, and Tony Gonzalez? Holt was a superstar, and it felt like that at the time. However, with the cruel hands of time moving, Holt’s history hasn’t caught up with when he was present.
Twice, Holt broke 1,600 yards receiving. He was a part of the Greatest Show on Turf, which sent Isaac Bruce to the Hall of Fame. He led the league with 20 receptions during their 1999-2000 Super Bowl run, and 12 of his 20 catches went for first downs.
At the end of his career, Holt can hang his hat on the fact that he never stood on the field as a “lesser than” wide receiver. Yes, he was cut by the New England Patriots in 2010, but he was smart enough to walk away instead of adding some empty-calorie yards. Even with the Jaguars, Holt had more than 100 targets. He didn’t get a touchdown that season, but he was still averaging 14.2 yards per reception.