Honor the History of the Senior Oakland Raiders' Performance and Be Inspired to Higher Levels of Excellence on the NFL Playing Field

Damali Binta – Apr 15, 2012

Good, better, best is what so many people discuss about performance on the NFL playing field. What’s interesting is that sometimes folks forget to look at data showing maximum performance in a selected category.

For example, a study comparing 100 wide receivers listed Calvin Johnson and Larry Fitzgerald at the top of the list. This is good, so this inspired a comparison with one of the Oakland Raiders best wide receivers in the past. Here is the data, and it tells the story.

Here is the story, told by the selected data:

	yds	y/r	td	career y/r	career length
Wells	1260	26.8	14	23.1	5 yrs and retired
Johnson	1681	17.5	16	16	5 yrs and continuing
Fitzgerald	1411	17.6	8	13.9	more than 5 yrs

 

Now, anybody can truncate the data to make their player look better than another. Obviously, however, if a number is a maximum, then it remains a maximum in a fair sample of data reflecting high performance on the NFL playing field.

When a writer or researcher talks about listing the top players on the NFL playing field in a certain category, it ought to reflect outstanding data without negligent or intentional avoidance of outstanding performance of senior players.

A reasonable comparison of Warren Wells and Calvin Johnson is possible because both players had careers of five-year length.

In five years, Wells was able to get a phenomenal 26.8 average in yards/reception. In five years, Johnson had an outstanding average for his era, but it was not as high as the average for Wells.

Fitzgerald has played longer than five years, and his top numbers are 17.6 in yards/reception and a career average, so far, of 13.9.

No matter what some might say, some of the former Oakland Raiders were exceptional players, as demonstrated by their numbers, measuring their performance on the playing field.

Think about it! Go young Raiders!