no, not really. You had a few RB's catching passes like Faulk, but not like today. Not the TE either.
Bro, Larry Centers, a FB, had seasons where he caught 77, 99 and 101 passes in the 90s. Keith Byars, Ronnie Harmon, Edgar Bennett, Daryl Johnston, Ricky Watters, Thurman Thomas and others caught lots of passes every year. Hell, Emmit Smith averaged over 40 catches a season in the 90s, and he was a between the tackles runner. At TE you had Shannon Sharpe, Keith Jackson, Ben Coates, Brent Jones, Jay Novacek, and plenty of others who had a few big seasons. Heck if anything the passing game has trended more towards the WR position of late than it was back then.
Sharpe averaged 62 catches for his career and was basically a WR for them. Byers averaged 50. Jones averaged 40. If you call those great catching numbers you win. I call them average, but whatever.
IMO, the best offenses spread it around. It's far better to have six guys that catch 40-70 passes than one who catches 120.
Byars had a 13 year career. He had a five year stretch were he averaged 65 receptions a year. How is that average? For reference the most receptions by a RB in a season was Mcafree's 116. His best 5 year stretch, including an additional 107 catch season averaged 71. It's hard to stay effective as a RB for sustained periods of time.
There were 17 RB's this year that had more then 50 catches in a season. Many of them not starters. Byars was one, he is the exception. When Byars did it he was one of only 4 running backs that had over 50 catches in a season.
Byers's 65 catch average over that 5 year period would have been top 5 every year since the NFL went to a 17 game season. My point is he was not an average receiving back, he was exceptional. Which you now seem to be acknowledging after calling him average. Also, the importance of the RB as a receiving target depends on the offence. Bill Walsh used the RB in the passing game. His first year (1979) as a HC his reception leader was a RB named Paul Hofer with 58 receptions. That would have been the 4th most this year. The year after (1980) it was a FB named Earl Cooper with 83, which would have been the most this year. In fact there was only one year in his coaching career that a back wasn't the number one or number 2 leading receiver for him. Usually number one. Jerry Rice's rookie year Roger Craig lead the team with 91 receptions.
I never said he was average. I said his catches were average for what is considered common now. Byers was a quality player for sure. Not sure why you don't want to recognize that 17 is way more then 4. But, you are 100% correct Byers was a quality player.
If it was one season, lots of backs have a good season here and there. It was 5 in a row, that would be top amongst the top 5 even now. Which is not common now. Only the elite receiving backs do that for more than a couple of seasons in a row, even now. His performance then was not average for now. It would be elite. Also, cherry picking single years stats to compare eras is weak, I'm not even sure which years you picked. Per statmuse, in 2020 there were eight backs with more than 50 receptions, 2021 five, 2022 eleven, 2023 fourteen, 2024 nine. Versus when Byars was doing it: 1988 there were nine, 1989 ten, 1990 four, 1991 seven, 1992 ten, 1993 twelve. Crazy difference right?
I am not even sure what you are are trying to argue. I said it is more common now for RB's to catch passes then back in the 80's. You keep proving me right despite telling me I'm wrong. https://www.statmuse.com/nfl/ask/nfl-running-back-reception-leaders-2023 If you think 10, 4, 7, 10 is more then 14, I really can't help you. You win. I really don't care.
It's obvious that you care enough to pretend that you don't understand simple logic. I don't believe you are as dumb as you are pretending to be here. I just don't understand why you feel it's better to come off like that. So, very, very strange.
He’s horrible with stats and math. He doesn’t understand them. Time and time again things like this have been spelled out to him and he doesn’t get it. I mean, he doesn’t even understand how to use “then” and “than”.
btw.. if the claim is "more common for RBs to catch passes" in one era than another, you really shouldn't look at number of receptions because completion percentage was mid-50's back in the 80's and today it's in the mid-60's today. So even if you threw the same number of times to the RB (or any other receiver) they'd be expected to have 15-20% more receptions today due to rule changes etc. The number of receptions isn't an era-independent metric for how much the RB (or any other receiver) is being utilized in the passing game. You should look at number of times targeted. Or if you use receptions, multiply the 1980's data by 1.18 to compare to today.
To be fair, English sucks, and if I had to forgo spell check my intelligence would be rightly questioned.
I thought it was more about how many top performers, using a fair but arbitrary 50 baseline, than total numbers, as there is more passing today than then(that one was for dan). Even with more games vs less opportunity, the RB receiving option heavy offences spit out similar top performers using that standard. 94 and 95 had even more RBs with at lest 50 receptions than 2023.
What I'm pointing out is you can't use 50 as an absolute threshold for "top performers" without adjusting receptions by era because you'd be artificially sampling a smaller portion of "top performers" in the 80's than in the present day if you did that (i.e., it is not a fair threshold without the adjustment). You need to adjust receptions by era before using an arbitrary threshold.
I agree, but even you don't, it's not that different, and since adjusting supports my position, I am fine with not doing so.
I think the pedantic argument about more now or then is completely missing the point. Running backs and tight ends were very much a part of the passing game, then and now. Period. Suggesting that they weren't, at any time in the last 40 years, is just silly. I don't know what the argument is any more.
