Fantasy Football Yesterday: Only four from the deepest position make our Fantasy Wide Receiver Mount Rushmore

We put together our Mount Rushmore for Fantasy wide receivers since 1997.

By Heath Cummings

May 12, 2020 at 10:03 am ET • 3 min read

This week we're celebrating Fantasy Football Yesterday, honoring the greatest (and not so great) in the CBS Fantasy era (since 1997). As part of this process we created a Mount Rushmore for each position. Other than the time frame, there was no specific criteria for who was chosen. As you'll see, some of us focused on greatness in a specific season while others looked across entire careers. There were definitely some consensus selections, but also plenty of controversy over who was left out.

Here's our Mount Rushmore of Wide Receivers:

To determine this group, our panel each ranked six wide receivers. Here are our rankers:

Jamey Eisenberg
Dave Richard
Heath Cummings
Adam Aizer
Chris Towers
Ben Schragger
Ben Gretch

No matter what criteria was used, it became clear early in the process that three receivers would be near unanimous, starting with Randy Moss. Moss came in first on four of seven ballots and Adam Aizer was the only voter who left Moss out of his top two. Eight times in his career, Moss finished as a top-five Fantasy receiver, including four seasons as No. 1. Moss's 2007 season was one of the greatest bounce-back seasons of all-time and the best Fantasy season for a receiver in this era.

All three analysts who didn't have Moss at the the top of their ballot did have Antonio Brown. While the past year has been a turbulent one for Brown, there is no denying his Fantasy greatness before that. From 2014 through 2018, Brown never finished worse than third at the position. He also had two of the five best seasons of the era. Longevity is a bit of an issue for Brown, but as you'll see below longevity was not really a concern for most voters.

Our third unanimous selection was Marvin Harrison. He didn't get any first-place votes, but was second or third on every ballot, which probably fits well with the way he's perceived. But that perception is wrong if it means you don't think he's elite. At his peak, Harrison embodied the word elite. From 1999 through 2006 he averaged more than 100 catches, 1,400 yards and 12 touchdowns per season. Three of those seasons ranked in the top 11 of the decade. All but one of those seasons ranked in the top five in the given season.

There was no consensus for No. 4 in this exercise. Calvin Johnson is who the group selected, while Chris Towers and I thought Terrell Owens was the most deserving. As for Johnson, he has a very good case. He was the best receiver in Fantasy in 2011 and 2012. He had a four-year stretch of top-six performance and finished as a top-10 receiver six times. His 2011 season was better than any season Owens ever had, but I still think Owens was robbed.

The weird thing for Owens was that he never had a No. 1 season at receiver. But he did have seven top-five seasons and finished second at the position four times. Ten times he finished in the top 15. His best nine-year stretch wasn't quite as good as Johnson's, but he played so much longer that any nine-year stretch you choose for Owens leaves out at least one of his top-three seasons. Owens was great for much longer than Johnson, but Johnson's best was better than Owens. The best resolution may have just been to etch another face in the wide receiver mountain.

Julio Jones, Torry Holt and Odell Beckham all received votes in this process, but only because we each submitted six names. No one thought any of them actually deserved to be on the mountain. It's hard to see that changing any time soon, though if Jones finished No. 1 in 2020 he'd join the Johnson/Owens tier. In the next three to five years, Michael Thomas is probably the only receiver who has a legitimate shot, especially if we get to 2025 and Thomas has still finished every season as a top-10 receiver.