Jerry Rice thinks he’d double his numbers in today’s NFL

How good would Jerry Rice be if he entered the league now? The Hall of Famer estimates he’d be roughly twice as good in the modern, offense-friendly, pass-happy NFL.

Rice joined NBC Sports’ Brother From Another at the American Century Championship golf tournament in Tahoe and talked about how he’d fare in today’s game. The NFL’s greatest receiver said his numbers would skyrocket thanks to a dip in physicality.

“First of all, the game really favors the wide receiver now, because you can’t put your hands on him,” Rice told Michael Smith and Michael Holley. “Linebackers can’t take shots at you coming across the middle anymore. It’s kind of hard because it’s hypothetical, I probably might be able to like double everything.”

Rice is already leaps and bounds ahead of every other player in receptions, receiving yards and receiving touchdowns, and it’s less than a reach to assume he’d amass even greater numbers if he stepped into this version of pro football.

Doubling his numbers seems perhaps a little farfetched, but it got us wondering what that would look like.

Here are his real numbers:

Receptions: 1,549
Receiving yards: 22,895
Receiving touchdowns: 197

Here’s what those numbers look like doubled:

Receptions: 3,098
Receiving yards: 45,790
Receiving touchdowns: 394

His career totals are already comical. Doubling them puts them in a realm somewhere north of absurdity.

For context, Rice played 303 games and averaged 5.1 receptions for 75.6 yards and 0.65 touchdowns per contest. Those are incredible numbers over a 20-year span.

Doubling them across a 20-year sample shines a light on just how insanely productive a player would have to be to reach those totals.

Rice would need to average 10.2 catches, 151.1 yards and 1.3 touchdowns per game. Last year Packers WR Davante Adams was the NFL’s leader with 8.2 catches per game. He also led the league in yards per game at 98.1, and he averaged 1.3 touchdowns per game with 18 in 14 contests. Rice would need to blow him away in the first two categories on average for two decades.

While all of those numbers put Rice’s ambitious hypothetical goals into their nigh impossible perspective, it’s hard to put anything past him considering the numbers he amassed during a much more physical, run-heavy era of NFL football. He’d surely be more productive than he is now, but even doubling his numbers might be a stretch for the GOAT.

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