In Brad Oremland’s latest post on wide receivers — and you should really be following the whole series — we got into a bit of a debate on Charlie Joiner in the comments. I’m not ready to provide my full analysis, but I thought I would start with presenting some data. And the quickest and easiest starting point is a gray ink test based on receiving yards.

The way it works is simple. For finishing first in a category, a player gets 10 points; for finishing 2nd, he gets 9 points; for 3rd, he gets 8 points, and so on. I did the same thing when analyzing Eli Manning and whether or not he was HOF-worthy (spoiler: he was not).

Joiner does not fare terribly here, but he doesn’t do all that well, either. He ranked 4th in receiving yards in 1980, so that is worth 7 points. His 6th-place finish the next year is worth 5 points, and his 3rd-place finish in 1976 is worth 8 points. That totals 20 points: it’s ahead of a number of HOF receivers (Lynn Swann, Fred Biletnikoff, Paul Warfield, Art Monk, Charley Taylor, and Andre Reed being the most notable), but it also ranks behind a lot of really good receivers not in the Hall of Fame. That includes contemporaries like Cliff Branch, Harold Jackson, and Drew Pearson. The table below shows every player with at least 14 points of Gray Ink:

Note that this is really quick and dirty. I combined the AFL and NFL seasons, along with the AAFC and NFL seasons, which is probably not the best way to handle things. I didn’t adjust for era, so players in smaller leagues get big advantages (hi, Jim Benton!) especially during weaker times like during WW II (hi, Jim Benton!). I don’t adjust for games played, which is not ideal. For example, Terrell Owens fares poorly here, but he averaged 109 yards per game during a 7-game 2005 season, led the league in yards per game in 2000 but missed two games, and ranked 2nd in ’02 when he also missed two games. Another reason Owens doesn’t do well is he was more of a touchdown guy than a yards guy, and this only looks at touchdowns. Ditto Cris Carter, who doesn’t do well here but also doesn’t get any credit for his high reception totals. This list is probably much better (and, for what it’s worth, Joiner only rises to 60 on that one).

A receiving yards Gray Ink table is just the start of a conversation, not the end, but I do find the numbers interesting. Jerry Rice and Don Hutson magically have the same number, which is neat. Another cool feature: you can compare across positions. Rice and Hutson each have 105 points, while Peyton Manning had 102 points using ANY/A, but that was before a 7-point season in 2014; as a result, he would slightly beat out both Rice and Hutson, which is kind of crazy.

Along with Benton, it’s another Rams receiver — Torry Holt — at the top of the list among non-HOF wide receivers. The knock on Holt is that he played in a pass-heavy offense, as did Joiner, but he was the opposite of Joiner when it came to longevity. Holt only played 11 years, but he never had less than 700 receiving yards in a season. I’d call that a feature, not a bug, but the lack of a few 400- and 500-yard seasons leaves him at #13, and not #3, on the all-time receiving yards list.