Yesterday, I wrote about how Michael Irvin was dominant in Receiving Yards per adjusted Team Pass Attempts.  From 1991 to 1996, he ranked 1st in that category three times, and 2nd in the other three seasons.  From a Gray Ink perspective, that would mean he would get 10 points each for his three first place finishes and 9 points each for his three second place finishes, for a total of 57 points.  He also ranked 10th in 1998, which would give him one more point.

The fact that I wrote about Irvin yesterday wasn’t a coincidence.  I calculated the Gray Ink for each receiver in NFL history in RY/aTPA, and Irvin’s 58 points (which turns out to be 55 points after you adjust for the number of teams in the league) was the third best in NFL history. Here are the top 75 receivers by this metric. You can read the table below as follows. Jerry Rice played from 1985 to 2004, and accumulated 92 points of Gray Ink, where a 1st-place finish in Receiving Yards/adjusted Team Pass Attempt is worth 10 points, a 2nd-place finish 9 points, a 3rd-place finish 8 points, and so on. The final column is a pro-rated value number, which lowers the value gives in seasons where there were fewer than 32 teams. This most clearly impacts older players like Don Hutson, who drops from 102 points to 66.9 points.

Irvin had six dominant seasons, which is why he fares so high. But there are a few surprises in the top 10.

• James Lofton is a surprise top five finisher, but it’s because he had 9 top-10 seasons, include seven in a row with the Packers. In 1978, he ranked 7th in RY/aTPA. He ranked 7th in 1979, then 2nd in 1980, 3rd in 1981, 5th in 1982, 7th in 1983, 4th in 1984, and 4th in 1985. He ranked 8th in ’87 with the Raiders and then 6th in ’91 with the Bills. Lofton ranked in the top 5 in receiving yards every year from ’80 to ’84 and then ranked 6th in ’85, so perhaps this isn’t too surprising. But in ’78 and ’79, he was really good, too: his problem was the Packers ranked 27th and 17th in pass attempts those seasons. For example, in ’78, his 818 receiving yards looks unimpressive now, but consider that it represented 35% of all Packers receiving yards that year. Extending his peak from 5 years to 7 years jumps Lofton into the top five.

• Paul Warfield is a similar player to Irvin, and these are the sorts of metrics one needs to use to understand his impact. Warfield ranked 4th (and 2nd in the NFL) with the Browns in ’64, 2nd with the Browns in ’68, and then 3rd, 1st, 2nd, and 2nd with Miami in ’70, ’71, ’72, and ’74. In 1973, he was also first-team All-Pro, but that was on the basis of 11 touchdown receptions: he ranked 11th in RY/aTPA that season.

Some players who don’t fare as well here as you might expect? Randy Moss is “only” 11th here. From ’98 to ’09, here were his yearly ranks: 7th, 3rd, 1st, 14th, 6th, 1st, and 42nd with the Vikings, then 34th and 56th with the Raiders, and then 5th, 24th, and 15th with the Patriots. Obviously looking at just receiving yards will hurt Moss, who was great at scoring touchdowns.

Terrell Owens ranked 2nd, 3rd, 3rd, 8th, and 5th in a five-year stretch from 2000 to 2004, the last of those years coming with the Eagles. He had a monster 2.81 RY/aTPA average in ’05, but since he played in only seven games that year (he was suspended by the Eagles for the rest of the season), he gets no points for that season. He then ranked 9th, 2nd, and 20th in his three seasons in Dallas.

How about current superstars like Julio Jones, Antonio Brown, and A.J. Green? Jones has the following ranks since entering the league in 2011: 17, 19, n/a, 5, 2, 1, 3. So he’s in the middle of dominant stretch, which you knew before you read this article. Brown since 2010: n/a, 16, 34, 5, 3, 1, 5, 1. So that’s a five-year stretch of top-five finishes. Green also entered the NFL in 2011 with Jones; his career finishes, in order, are 14, 5, 7, 7, 4, 2, and 8. He’s the quietest superstar of our era.