Yesterday, I looked at the average height of the receivers of each team in the NFL in 2013. Today, we’ll use the same method but look at every NFL team since 1950. As it turns out, the 2013 Bears rank as one of the third tallest group of receivers in history. The only thing Chicago didn’t have was a 6’8 Harold Carmichael.
The table below shows the 200 teams with the tallest average receivers since 1950. A couple of famous teams are at the top of the list, including the 2007 Super Bowl champion Giants. Eli Manning will never be confused with a hyper-accurate quarterback, so it was smart of the Giants to surround him with tall targets like Plaxico Burress, Amani Toomer, and Jeremy Shockey. The 1998-2000 Minnesota Vikings with Randy Moss, Cris Carter, Jake Reed, and Andrew Glover, all made the top 25. And before Chicago had Brandon Marshall, Alshon Jeffery and Martellus Bennett, the Bears had another trio of monster wide receivers: Harlon Hill, Bill McColl, and Jim Dooley.
What about the teams with the shortest average receivers since 1950? As you might suspect, the Run-N-Shoot teams that didn’t roster tight ends dominate the list:
I’ll leave it to you guys in the comments to let me know what stands out to you about the shortest teams. But let me close with an graph of the average of each team’s average receiving height in each year since 1950:
[visualizer id=”17875″]
I think we can attribute the nadir of the curve to the phasing out of the tight end position at the end of the ’80s. But this is a pretty interesting graph, and one that I don’t think would be intuitive to even league historians. Since 1990, though, the average height has been steadily increasing. Is that a trend that’s here to stay, or should we expect another dip in the next few years?
