Tyreek Hill is fast. Like, really fast. He's got wheels for days, and he has the football skills needed to turn that speed into not only an amazing skill, but a devastating weapon in an NFL offense. He's been a Pro Bowler in all five years of his NFL career, a first-team All-Pro selection for three, and is one of just ten wide receivers with at least 5,000 yards since 2016.
A lot of the damage he inflicts on opponents, predictably, comes from the deep ball. According to Pro Football Reference, Hill is third in the NFL over the past five years on passes that are deemed as "deep passes" in their database.
These types of numbers cause many of us to consider Hill an elite deep threat, including NFL.com's Nick Shook, who ranked Hill No. 8 on his list of the NFL's best deep threats at the midway point of the 2020 season. Some people, however, think that ranking is laughable. Not only will some say that Hill is the best deep threat in today's game, but they'll say he's the best deep threat ever. Take, for instance, Pro Football Focus college football analyst Anthony Treash, whose Tyreek Hill take erupted into a massive Twitter debate.
It didn't take long for the post to gain a ton of traction, and though a good portion of that interaction came from the joyous fan base of the Kansas City Chiefs, a lot of it came from other areas of the NFL community. And, needless to say, some fans were none-too-pleased.
Perhaps the biggest cluster of arguments came from Team Randy Moss, bringing out the highlights and the takes that seemed to squash the argument right away.
And then there were the Jerry Rice, Calvin Johnson and DeSean Jackson clusters, all of which had solid representation throughout the discourse. Eh, "discourse" sounds too civilized. Nothing on Twitter is that polite... but you get the idea. Some other names, some real throwbacks, were brought up as well.
What say you, readers? Does Tyreek Hill actually hold a legitimate stake in the competition to be the NFL's greatest deep threat of all time? Is it foolish to label him as such? Is yards per catch a worthwhile statistic to use, considering a two-yard screen could result in an 80-yard touchdown though that has nothing to do with deep-threat ability? Does the length of Randy Moss's deep touchdown highlight reel render all other arguments ineffective?
Perhaps instead of answers, we'll just get more and more questions, but that's fine with us. We love a good debate.
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