Can Fitz or Megatron challenge Rice’s records?

One of the things I wrote I would be watching last weekend was the level to which playing with Carson Palmer can get the career of Larry Fitzgerald back on track. No, no, I’m not saying Fitz has been terrible, by any stretch. But through largely no fault of his own, he hasn’t had anyone throwing him the ball who could help him achieve what he had been early in his career. If game one is any indication, expect the Cardinals’ number one wideout’s numbers to fall back in line with what they looked like during the first six years of his career.

Fitz caught eight passes for 80 yards and two touchdowns, including a perfectly placed over-the-shoulder job heading into halftime. Fitzgerald gave way in the second half a bit, as Palmer spread the ball around to Michael Floyd and Andre Roberts, but it was an encouraging sight for those who took a flyer on #11 during fantasy football drafts.

My curiosity with Fitzgerald was piqued when I compared the stats he put up during his first half-dozen years to those put up by Calvin Johnson during that same period of his career – which culminated with Megatron’s record-setting season in 2012.

Last year when Johnson was chasing down Jerry Rice’s single-season yardage record, we took a look at how the young Lions receiver was trending compared with Rice’s career marks, since the Hall of Famer holds almost all of them.

Photo credit: Glenn’s GISuser.com via Wikipedia

Through the first chunk of Johnson’s sixth season, we determined that Megatron actually was running fairly close to where Rice had been after his first half-dozen seasons. By the time the season ended, Johnson had eclipsed Rice’s first six years in catches by a 488-446 margin. Johnson still trailed Rice in yards, but by a mere 30 – 7,866 to 7,836 for Rice.

Rice still has a commanding lead in touchdowns at 79-54 through each of their first six seasons.

While Megatron has ascended to being almost unarguably the best receiver in the game today, one who could compare favorably was Fitzgerald. Through Fitz’ first six seasons, five of which overlapped with the mostly top level play of potential Hall of Famer Kurt Warner, Fitz caught 523 passes for 7,067 yards and 59 touchdowns – that eclipsed Rice’s catches during the equivalent years of his career by 67. Rice still had more yards and touchdowns than the Cardinals’ wideout.

But during the three seasons since Warner retired, Fitzgerald has been stuck attempting to catch passes and chase records with guys like Ryan Lindley, Max Hall, John Skelton and Kevin Kolb at the helm. Subsequently, his chase for Rice’s records has dropped off.

In four of his first six seasons, Fitz reached at least 96 catches and he had 1,400 yards receiving in three of the six. He averaged just a shade under 10 touchdowns per season during that stretch. In the last three years, he still put up great numbers comparatively, but his high-water mark was 90 and he fell off to 71 catches for 798 yards last year. More noticeably, his touchdowns dropped. He hasn’t reached double-digits in the last three years and last year he caught just four scores.

The three “down” years certainly slowed Fitz’s efforts to catch Rice’s career totals. During years seven through nine of his career, Rice put up three monster seasons:

Not only did Rice’s seventh, eighth and ninth years put distance between himself and Fitz, but Rice actually had possibly his best three year stretch from years 10-12.

These numbers, I think, show just how good Rice was. He was injured for most of 1997, but came back to post three more 1,000-yard seasons, playing 20 years before finally hanging up his helmet for good. You could make an argument that Fitz and Johnson are the best two receivers of this pass-happy generation. They’re big. They rarely drop anything. They’re both fitness freaks, which gives them at least one characteristic in common with the 49er legend.

But at this point, both would have to put up some pretty monster numbers to even leave themselves a remote chance of eclipsing Rice’s records. Nine years into his own career, Fitzgerald remains less than halfway to Rice’s catches and yardage totals and not yet 40 percent of the way toward the TD mark.

If Megatron can match his last three seasons over the next three, he’d leave himself just over halfway toward the catches and yardage marks, but less than halfway to the TD record.

Rice finished with 1,549 catches, 22,895 yards and 197 touchdowns. Yes, he benefited from playing most of his career with two of the best of all time – Joe Montana and Steve Young. But the distance he put between himself and even the best receivers of the most pass-happy era of all-time shows just how great a receiver he was.