Determineing Whos The Greatest

As I was sitting in my Calculus II class when my teacher Mrs. Giles posed a question to us, “who was the greatest wide receiver in the NFL”.  Most all that knew about football said Jerry Rice.  The she said a wide receiver name Don Hutson Rank #1 in almost categories during his tenure at wide out.  I went home just too look at the stats.  And Hutson stat does not come anywhere close to were Rice stats stand. So at that moment I said case closed.  But later on after much back and forth with myself I have know noticed that at the time he was a great receiver by the stats along but that was not his primary goal.  He played many position and was #1 in those categories also in those years he played.  So I wanted to do some math with this.

	Receptions	Receiving Yards	Receiving TD	Receiving Yd / Games
Rice	2	7	9	8
Hutson	8	6	6	6

As you can see from the table Hutson lead the league more than Rice in time he was # 1.  So I had to dig even deeper in to why Hutson was not label as the greatest wide receiver.  So I did calculative Career Stats to see how Hutson rack against Rice.

	Games	Receptions	Receiving Yards	Receiving TD	Receiving Yd / Games
Rice	303	1549	22895	197	75
Hutson	116	488	7991	99	69

As you can see Rice has more in all categorizes. That can be why the said he is the Greatest.  But to be fare Rice played 20 Seasons and Hutson played only 11 seasons. Rice played an average of 16 games to Hutson 10 games a season.  So how could I even this out to see who is the greatest wide out to play this game.  I decided to take Hutson stats average and multiply it by 20 and this is the results I came up with. He average 4.2 receptions per game X 303 gave me 1272.  He average 68.9 yards per game X 303 Games gave me 20876 yd.  H average 9 touchdowns per season X 20 seasons gave me 180 touchdowns.

	Games	Receptions	Receiving Yards	Receiving TD	Receiving Yd / Games
Hutson	303	1272	20876	180	69
Rice	303	1549	22895	197	75

From the data I complied he still would not have been # 1 in any of those categorizes. So I can personally say that Jerry Rice is the best Wide receiver to ever play football.  But then I can honestly say that Don Hutson was one of the best player that played the game of football because he also was the kicker and DB and that not easy to do and during his era he was the greatest receiver.

I have added a link to where I received all the stats.

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/R/RiceJe00.htm

http://www.pro-football-reference.com/players/H/HutsDo00.htm