Ranking the best WR rooms in the NFL after the free agency rush: Where do the Eagles rank?

Five years ago, we were watching Carson Wentz throw to J.J. Arcega-Whiteside, Greg Ward, and Jalen Reagor. Now, Jalen Hurts is throwing the ball to A.J. Brown, DeVonta Smith, and Jahan Dotson (sometimes). In five years, the Philadelphia wide receiver room went from stinking like the juice at the bottom of a trash can to smelling like a Febreeze factory. 

When you’re looking at the best wide receiver rooms in the NFL, some people will tell you that the Philadelphia Eagles’ isn’t No. 1. Those people are wrong, but it’s worth looking at what delusions those people are telling themselves to have such an awful and delusional take. 

Definitive ranking of the best wide receiver rooms

By my book, the best wide receivers in the NFL are CeeDee Lamb, Terry McLaurin, DeVonta Smith, Mike Evans, Puka Nacua, Nico Collins, Amon-Ra St. Brown, A.J. Brown, Justin Jefferson, and Ja’Marr Chase. Just keep that in mind when you’re looking at these rankings. 

5. Tampa Bay Buccaneers

There’s not a lot of fantasy football that relates to real football, but almost everyone in the world has thought that Mike Evans would fall off at some point over the past two or three years and skipped him in their draft. He’s not washed up, and he might never be. The guy has been a perennial monster over the past 11 years, and if he wants to, he’ll probably be one for the next 11 years. 

As long as the Buccaneers have Evans, they will have at least a good wide receiver room. Then you take into account the likes of Chris Godwin and Jalen McMillan? Yeesh. That’s a good room.

Godwin did just mess up his leg pretty badly and miss ten games, which means he might take a step back next season, but he also messed up his leg in 2021 and came back in 2022 and had a 104-catch season for over 1,000 yards with over 500 YAC. 

McMillan got some good experience in his rookie season with Godwin out, and it has set him up for a breakout sophomore season. He’s one of those guys who you don’t quite know just yet, but you will.

4. Detroit Lions

Amon-Ra St. Brown is a psychopath, and it shows. He took a page out of Arya Stark’s book and has a list of every wide receiver that was drafted before him in the 2021 draft and recites it to himself every day, or something like that. 

It’s clearly working because the guy is phenomenal. His worst season was his rookie season, and that was the only season where he had under 100 catches and under 1,000 yards. Since then, he’s kind of just exploded, which is crazy because his rookie season was a pretty high mark already.

The most amazing thing about him is that last season, he caught an NFL-leading 81.6% of the balls thrown to him. The closest wide receiver who was targeted over 100 times was Khalil Shakir, and he was at 76%. St. Brown is a really, really good wide receiver who raises both the floor and ceiling of his offense just by being on the field. 

Jameson Williams is the Lions WR2, and he’s also really good. When he gets the ball, he goes off. He only had 58 catches last season but had 1,001 receiving yards. He’s the kind of receiver that defenses have to respect, or else they’ll die. 

The knock on him is that he misses time. He came into the league with a busted up knee, and he only played in six games. Then, before his second year, he got suspended for violating the NFL’s gambling policy. Last year, he missed two games because he violated the NFL’s PED rules. 

When we’re talking about the best receiver rooms, you have to take into account how often players miss time and the amount of time they miss. Jameson Williams does a phenomenal job at what he does, but his flakey-ness brings the room down. 

3. Minnesota Vikings

Justin Jefferson alone gives the Vikings a top-three wide receiver room. He’s going into his sixth season in the NFL, and the only season where he hasn’t had over 1,400 receiving yards was in 2023. That year, he missed seven games and still had 1,000 yards. 

There’s a very real chance that he’ll be the first receiver to ever hit the 2,000 receiving yard mark, but that would take a team effort… and by team effort, I mean another year like 2022 when the Vikings were constantly in close games and had a pretty good quarterback. 

Behind Jefferson is Jordan Addison. He’s not a Jameson Williams or a Chris Godwin, but he’s pretty good, but nothing special. To be fair to Addison, it’s tough to tell what he is because we haven’t seen much of him playing with both a good quarterback and no Justin Jefferson. 

Jefferson really is the engine, the gas, and the NOS that makes the Vikings' wide receiver room go.

2. Cincinnati Bengals

If you’re going to listen to an argument for a team that has a better wide receiver room than the Eagles, it’s an argument for the Cincinnati Bengals. 

Ja’Marr Chase is the best wide receiver in the world, and there’s not really anything that anyone can do about it. He just became the 13th player to win the NFL’s triple crown, and he was the youngest player to win it in the past 70 years. He’s going to be really good for a really long time. 

His WR2 is Tee Higgins, and he’s the reason the Bengals aren’t at the top. He’s really good and equally clutch. In the Bengals’ Super Bowl run in 2021, Higgins had 17 catches for 299 yards from the Divisional round on. 

The problem is, once again, the availability; he’s not on the field often enough to make him a dominant WR2. In the past two seasons, he’s missed 10 games, and that doesn’t account for the games where he’s playing hurt and doesn’t get a full workload (which happens a lot).

When those two guys are on the field at the same time, that offense runs at a truly different level. It just doesn’t happen nearly as often as it should… which partially explains their two seasons of going 9-8 and missing the playoffs. The other reason is that they keep missing on draft picks, and their defense is just about as bad as Ja’Marr Chase is good.

1. Philadelphia Eagles

A.J. Brown might not be as good as Ja’Marr Chase, but he is more dominant. Since he came to Philadelphia in 2022, he’s had over 1,000 receiving yards every season. That includes last season when he played in the run-heaviest offense and missed four games. The two seasons before that, he had over 1,400 yards. A.J. Brown is the prototype for an X-receiver who can break games. 

When the Eagles traded for A.J. Brown, the question was, ‘Who will be WR1, A.J. Brown or DeVonta Smith?’

In that 2022 season, it was pretty close between the two, and they definitely earned their “Swole Batman and Skinny Batman” nicknames. Since then, Brown has widened the gap. That’s not an indictment on DeVonta Smith because he is also super sick.

If he’s not the best route runner in the NFL, then he’s the second best. He’s one of the most sure-handed wide receivers in the NFL, and he’s widely resilient to boot. 

When he came into the league, the only knock on him was his size and whether or not his body could hold up to playing at an NFL level. He can. He’s only missed five games in his four-year career. One of those games was because of a concussion from a dirty hit in New Orleans, and one of those games was in Week 18 this season when the Eagles rested their starters.

It turns out that drafting the best wide receiver in college football history and the first one to win the Heisman in 30 years was a good idea.

Their numbers are never going to be extremely gaudy because they play on the best team in the NFL, and they’re hardly ever forced to throw the ball consistently. When they do need to throw the ball, A.J. Brown and DeVonta Smith take games over. The Eagles have two of the ten-best wide receivers in the world, and they undeniably have the best wide receiver room in the NFL.