Two Gators among ESPN’s greatest receivers of the last 50 years
Though Florida football is mostly known for its quarterback play with three players winning the Heisman Trophy at the position, it has also produced a number of very skilled receivers. Including Percy Harvin, Dallas Baker, Ike Hilliard and so many more, the best teams in program history have all had top-tier receivers.
Unfortunately, none of the players just mentioned appear on ESPN’s rankings of the 50 greatest college football receivers of the last 50 years, which was written by college football analytics expert Bill Connelly. However, two former Gator pass-catchers do.
One honorable mention from UF also appears. Here’s where each of the UF players stacks up, starting with Kyle Pitts.
Honorable Mention - Kyle Pitts
Matt Pendleton/Correspondent
In just eight games last season, Pitts caught 43 balls for 770 yards and 12 scores -- a pace for 1,250 yards over 13 games -- and gave Florida nonstop matchup advantages. The problem: he was a 6-foot-6, 245-pound tight end.
If this list purely measured pass-catchers, it's easy to assume that Pitts, who was the highest-drafted tight end in the common era of the draft, would rank much higher. He spent the last two seasons largely lining up on the outside for UF, and he saw the number of targets that a No. 1 receiver normally would receive. But this list exclusively ranks receivers, so he's not eligible. Still, his play merits a mention here.
No. 33 - Wes Chandler
AP Photo
Years: 1974-77 Career Stats: 93 catches, 1,994 yards, 22 TDs (also: 356 rushing yards, 6 rushing TDs) How good did a receiver have to be to earn Heisman votes from a run-heavy offense in the 1970s? Well, Chandler was that good. He caught 44 balls for 967 yards and 10 scores as a junior before finishing 10th in the Heisman voting (and going third in the draft) as a senior.
Chandler's production is almost unbelievable when you think about the era in which he played (and the fact that those Florida teams from 1974-77 were nothing to write home about, with the best team in that span going 9-3). He was a two-time first team All-American, and he earned four Pro Bowl and one first-team All-Pro honor in his 10-year NFL career. He spent 11 years as a coach, and his nephew, Dallas Baker, had a stellar UF career of his own as mentioned previously.
No. 15 - Reidel Anthony
Gainesville Sun/Stephen Morton/File
Years: 1994-96 Career Stats: 126 catches, 2,274 yards, 26 TDs (also: 56 rushing yards, 1 rushing TD, 1 kick return TD) It's hard to know what to do with the bounty of great receivers Florida produced under Steve Spurrier in the 1990s. From 1995-2001, eight Gators WRs recorded 1,000-yard seasons, and only one did it twice. Nobody, therefore, had standout career numbers. But of those eight receivers, nobody was as frightening as Anthony in 1996. He averaged 18 yards per catch with an SEC-record (at the time) 18 touchdowns for Spurrier's lone national title team.
Even 25 years later, Anthony's 18 touchdowns in 1996 stand as the school record and were the SEC record until broken by Ja'Marr Chase and Devonta Smith in 2019 and 2020, respectively. Spurrier had a lot of talented receivers during his UF tenure, as Connelly mentions, but it's hard to beat the production from Anthony, especially in his final season. He played five seasons in the NFL with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, totaling 1,846 yards and 16 touchdowns in 37 career starts.
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