In today’s NFL, it feels like a handful of wide receivers break out and become great players every year, with the position being more loaded now than ever. However, for as good as these receivers are, none may come close to the level of play Antonio Brown put on the field when he was with the Steelers.
Brown’s career did not end with grace, and he is now talked about more for his issues off the field, but there was a good stretch of time when he was the best receiver in the NFL. One former wide receiver even believes that makes him the second-best receiver of all time.
Jeremy Butler played in the NFL from 2014 to 2017, bouncing around with a couple of teams but spending the most time with the Ravens to start his career. Therefore, Butler got to see firsthand just how good Brown was, and apparently, that left a big impact. On a recent episode of The Inquisitive Mamba Podcast, Butler was asked to rank who he believed to be the top five receivers of all time, and Brown ended up landing at number two on his list, with Butler also saying that Brown is better than Jerry Rice due to the different eras the two played in.
”And we can go in order on this one, so for me, Randy Moss, AB. I know that’s probably gonna piss a lot of people off, but skill-wise? Like when you know the position, skill-wise, techniques, fundamentals, bringing everything to the table,” Butler said about what made Brown a better receiver than Rice. “If I dropped Antonio or Julio in that era, come on, man.”
Butler’s list after Brown saw Terrell Owens at third, Calvin Johnson at fourth, and Julio Jones at fifth, with Rice not being listed at all. It’s some of the highest praise that can be thrown a player’s way, especially from someone who played receiver at the highest level.
Brown certainly has the numbers to back up such a claim, as his production from 2013 to 2018 looks like it’s from a video game set on the easiest difficulty. This conversation may have more of a foundation under it if Brown hadn’t decided to become one of the biggest locker room issues the league had ever seen.
The argument about Brown being better than Rice due to the eras they played in feels unstable, though. While it’s true that Rice played with two Hall of Fame quarterbacks, he was also lining up against some of the best cornerbacks to ever play in the NFL. Deion Sanders, Darrell Green, and Rod Woodson are immortalized in the Hall of Fame for their level of play. Brown played against his share of Hall of Fame defensive backs as well, but not many who can be talked about with the names Rice battled.
Ultimately, this is a question with no real answer because of how great all the players involved are. A person isn’t wrong if they think Brown is the best receiver ever, just like how another person isn’t wrong if they believe Moss, Rice, or Owens is the best ever. They’ve all proved that they were masters of the wide receiver position, and playing the what-if game never got anyone anywhere.
In a different world, Brown stays with the Steelers and breaks all of Rice’s records, but that isn’t the world we live in. Due to his antics off the field, Brown may never even see his name put next to his peers in the Hall of Fame, and that holds more weight than any player list ever will.
