It’s 8:18 PM in Chicago Illinois – June 10th, 2022

I am currently sitting in the living room of the Lyrical Lemonade office alongside my buddies Sal Tarantino and Joe Rocha. We were watching the NBA finals game between the Boston Celtics and the Golden State Warriors when Sal suddenly decided to attack one of my childhood treasures, Randy Moss. This reckless comment sparked a debate between the three of us, Joe & I were trying to convince Sal about how raw Randy Moss is/was, but Sal wasn’t trying to hear it.

Sal suggested that Randy Moss’s legacy has been “greatly tainted” because of how he has handled his post-playing career, which left me befuddled. I thought to myself: Randy Moss hasn’t ever had any off-the-field issues that I know of. When I asked Sal to explain himself, all he could say is “Randy works for ESPN, it’s untasteful and he’s replaceable”.

The dust settled, people were looking around in confusion, and I even saw someone shed a single tear. I looked Sal deep into his eyes, and I said “are we about to take it there” *pause*. Clearly, we were on the same page, because seconds later, Sal busted out the whiteboard and we are listing out our Top 10 Wide Receivers of All-Time. We are going to collectively come up with our Top 10 list together, after writing out our personal lists on the whiteboard.

Please keep in mind that we were all born in the late 90s, apologies in advance if we don’t list Steve Largent.

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Our Top 10 Wide Wide Receivers of All-Time list goes as follows

1 • Calvin Johnson

2 • Randy Moss

3 • Jerry Rice

4 • Terrell Owens

5 • Larry Fitzgerald

6 • Antonio Brown

7 • Julio Jones

8 • Marvin Harrison

9 • Steve Smith

10 • Chad Ochocinco

Honorable Mention: Hines Ward

We are going to start off with this, Sal is unpredictable, he’s a die-hard Pittsburgh Steelers fan and he doesn’t hide his bias. I have known this man for about eight years, and I learned very quickly, that Sal LOVES Antonio Brown. With everything in his heart and soul, he loves AB. Even with all of the controversy that Antonio Brown has found himself in over the years – Sal always will come up with a reason about how it’s not his fault.

“Antonio Brown should have won the MVP trophy in 2017 over Tom Brady, he was the best player in football. The only reason he didn’t is because of the QB bias in award voting” – Salvatore Tarantino

Joe Rocha is a good dude but I can’t lie, he was trying to argue Julian Edelman and Wes Walker in the Top 10, if that doesn’t SCREAM a biased Patriots fan, I don’t know what does. In his own personal list, Joe deemed Jerry Rice the greatest receiver of all time, and you have to respect it. He also said how much he loves the heart that Randy Moss has, and how he treats the current-day players.

“The NFL All-Pro wide receivers look up to Jerry Rice, they are trying to embody what he was and live up to his greatness” – Joe Rocha

When I sat there and thought about who I was going to list at #1, a lot of names came to mind, but only one was superior. Calvin Johnson was easily the greatest WR that I have ever watched, you NEVER see someone get doubled-teamed from the line of scrimmage like teams used to do. I grew up a Chicago Bears fan so I got to see a lot of Megatron, and it’s just a shame that he played in Detroit, they wasted the talent of the best WR of all time. – Elliot Montanez

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It’s now 9:39 and it has been a very trying last hour, to say the very least. Salvatore stole the TV remote and forced us to watch AB highlights for a good chunk of the time, and there was also a heated debate about Hines Ward vs Chad Ochocinco at the end. All in all, we love watching football and all of these guys are great, and this list was fun to create. If you got this far, thank you for reading, we appreciate it.

RIP John Madden

Love,

– Elliot Montanez, Salvatore Tarantino and Joe Rocha