Tyreek Hill Puts Antonio Brown on His Top 5 All Time WR List Over Jerry Rice, and Therefore Should Be Banned From Making Lists for All Eternity

It was all going innocently enough. Tyreek Hill having a sitdown with the fellas at NFL Network, enjoying some friendly banter about him being ranked No. 7 on this year's NFL Top 100, and the No. 2 wide receiver. He's asked about other top receivers of today and mentions all the usual suspects. Mike Evans, Keenan Allen, Ja'Marr Chase, Justin Jefferson, himself and the like. No issues so far. 

But then he's pressed to list the best of all time. And here's his five, in the order he listed them:

• Antonio Brown
• Terrell Owens
• Torry Holt
• Calvin Johnson
• Randy Moss

What madness is this? How the feck can any sentient being leave the obvious choice off this list? The guy who was No. 1 on the NFL's 100th Anniversary Top 100 in 2010? Ahead of Jim Brown, Lawrence Taylor and Joe Montana? And the only receiver to crack the top 37 spots? 

Hill explains:

“A lot of people get mad at me because I don’t put Jerry Rice in my category. I love Jerry Rice. He played a long time in the NFL. He’s like the alpha of our position. But he wasn’t playing in the sweet spot where I was able to watch. I was able to, in my rookie year, watch prime AB go out there and go for like 200.”

This is a guy who runs routes and catches footballs for a living. And leaves the unquestioned best ever at his occupation off his list because … he didn't see him play? Is everybody taking crazy pills?

Listen, I have my issues with Jerry Rice. He tried his hand at being a Deflategate Truther for a short while in the early days of that non-scandal. Until Patriots fans outed him for earlier admitting he used Stickum on his gloves long after it was outlawed. And as a result of the Masshole monkeys flying out of the witch's castle after Rice, he stopped posting anything on the internet for months. It was glorious. That said, nobody in their right mind can argue he wasn't the most effective outside weapon in the history of the game. 

"He played a long time in the NFL" is the ultimate damning him with faint praise. He wasn't some pretty good Major Leaguer who stuck around long enough to rack up a lot of cumulative stats and make the Hall of Fame like Jim Kaat or Don Sutton. He was - and remains - the gold standard at the position. A 13-time Pro Bowler. A 10-time All Pro. Three-time champion. An MVP. A Super Bowl MVP. He led the league in receiving yards six times in a 10-year span. He's No. 1 all time in receptions (117 more than runner-up Larry Fitzgerald) and receiving yards (with an incredible 5,403 more than Fitzgerald). Plus he let a young Julian Edelman take his daughter to prom.

So how can anyone with a straight face claim that Antonio Brown is better than him? Granted, Brown led the league in receptions and yards twice. Which is one fewer than the number of teams he royally fucked over by either forcing them to release him. I mean, Rice used Stickum, but he never missed an entire training camp by freezing his feet and pretending the league-mandated helmet didn't fit his head. Hell, in 2018 Brown was in his athletic prime and wasn't even the best receiver on the Steelers. That honor went to Juju Smith-Schuster. 

Oh, wait. My question has been asked and answered. Rice played before Tyreek Hill could see him play, therefore his claim to the throne is invalid. Gotcha. 

So do we blame the schools for this? Have we raised a generation of adults who are ignorant of history and think the world began when they came out of the birth canal? And does this apply to everyone and everything? Michael Jordan, Wayne Gretzky, Willie Mays, Bill Russell, Ted Williams Muhammad Ali, Larry Bird, the aforementioned Jim Brown. None of their accomplishments count because we didn't see them on SportsCenter in 2016? And if we're listing the best movies of all time, we're going with Cocaine Bear over The Godfather because we saw it in theaters? And take your pick between Biden and Trump for greatest President ever, because no one's alive who voted for Lincoln or either of the Roosevelts. 

I've belabored the point enough. Like I said in the headline, we need to correct this by never letting Hill make a list ever again. Not of receivers. Not of groceries. Not a Christmas list. Not an enemies list. Not a checklist of things he needs to get done around the house. Not list of any kind. He lost that privilege the moment he listed an undependable crackpot like AB ahead of this guy:

There's a limit to Freedom of Speech. And Tyreek Hill just exceeded it with this.