How close is this receiver group to being one of the worst in team history?

Back in May, we scoffed at the idea that the Jets could be ranked last in the league in terms of their wide receivers group. However, the team has since cut ties with Eric Decker and placed Quinton Patton on injured reserve.

Now that last placed ranked is much more justifiable, as even the most optimistic outlook would have to concede that the Jets will be relying mostly on unproven players this season. Nevertheless, the remaining pass catchers have been resolute that they will prove their doubters wrong.

Just how bad - or, shall we say - unproven is this group? Here's a potentially damning statistic from the AP's Dennis Waszak:

The above tweet (and most of this article) was written before it was reported that the Jets will sign Marquess Wilson, who himself has 56 receptions and a few touchdowns. However, since that move is not yet confirmed, let's exclude it from our analysis for now.

How does this stack up against the numbers for teams of the past though?

The team has had some great receivers groups over the years, many of them contributing here for several years or more. However, there have been some periods where the supply was running thin.

Many of the weakest receiver groups the team has fielded were stronger at this stage of the season, only to then lose players to injury or cut ties with established veterans in favor of unproven youngsters. Similarly, some groups were really weak at this point of the year but bolstered by additions closer to camp or even once the season was underway.

For fair comparison, we need to consider players that were in place in June, ignoring any players within that group that didn't make the team or later additions that ended up contributing. We will detail those for context as we go.

Let's count down the least experienced groups in recent memory before we compare them to this year's unit.

Honorable Mention - 2006

2006 was an amazing season. With a new GM, head coach and offensive system, the Jets defied expectations and somehow went 10-6 in a rebuilding year. The lack of talent up and down the roster was readily apparent, but somehow they smoke-and-mirrors'd their way to the playoffs.

The situation at wide receiver was no different, although they had three receivers who entered the season with at least 170 catches each, led by Laveranues Coles. However, one of those three - Tim Dwight - barely contributed anything on offense all season. Of the other three to make the roster, only Jerricho Cotchery (who at the time had 25 receptions in two years) had any receptions, as Brad Smith and Wallace Wright were both rookies.

Looking back to June, the other six receivers trying to make the team (Reggie Newhouse, Dante Ridgeway, Jovan Witherspoon, DeQawn Mobley, CJ Fayton and Chris Baker*) had just seven catches between them entering the season. So after the most experienced three, the rest of the receivers combined for just 32 catches. That compares unfavorably to the same number for the current team (58) so at least we can say this year's group has more experience in terms of some of its depth.

Also, one of those two three was the much-maligned Justin McCareins, which speaks to the strength of that group in spite of the top end production.

3rd place - 2012

The 2012 group was struggling so badly that they made several additions during the season, including a couple of players who were almost as maligned as some of the players they started off with - Jason Hill and Mardy Gilyard. They also added Clyde Gates at the beginning of the season and Braylon Edwards at the end. None of these moves did much to elevate a group that struggled as much as had been feared.

Matters weren't helped when Santonio Holmes suffered a season-ending injury in week four and rookie Stephen Hill's spectacular first game performance proved to be fool's gold. The Jets had also hoped new signing Chaz Schilens was about to emerge as a starter level player but that never happened.

Other than the top two - Holmes and Schilens - only two of the rest of the receivers on the roster in June had any NFL receptions at all at that time. Jeremy Kerley had 29 and Patrick Turner had 10. The others (Stephen Hill, Jordan White, Royce Pollard, Eron Riley, Dexter Jackson, Scotty McKnight, DeMarcus Ganaway) all entered the season with no NFL receptions.

Combined, the group from number three down had just 39 receptions for 336 yards and two touchdowns, which obviously falls short of the equivalent number for the Jets. In fact, if you just look at the rest of the receivers after the top producer, then the total receptions for 2012's group (111) again falls short (117).

Holmes was obviously a much more proven commodity at the time than Enunwa is now though, although he didn't get much chance show it that season. The 2013 and 2014 teams weren't really any better but they had players like TJ Graham, Ben Obomanu and David Nelson who brought some production to the group, even though their on-field contributions with the Jets would not prove significant.

2nd place - 2009

Remarkably this was another playoff team, but one which was almost completely reliant on its defense and running game.

The number for "apart from the top two" is actually slightly better than our 3rd placed team (39 catches again, but this time for 472 yards and three touchdowns). However, the number for the rest of the receivers apart from the top receiver (in this case Cotchery) comes in at a paltry 92 receptions.

Smith, Wright, David Clowney and Chansi Stuckey, the other four receivers to make the roster, combined to generate these numbers with the other receivers from June's roster again boasting zero career receptions between them at that time (Mario Urrutia, Marcus Henry, Britt Davis, Paul Raymond, Huey Whittaker).

Of course, this receiver group did successfully upgrade during the season when they traded Stuckey and a few other pieces to get Edwards for his more successful first stint with the team.

1st Place - 1995

Accurate details for exactly who was on the team in June as far back as 1995 are not easy to find, but we can be pretty confident that this was the weakest group the team has put forward in recent memory. The two leading receivers from the previous year (Rob Moore and Art Monk) were, respectively, traded on draft day and not invited back. Undrafted rookie Wayne Chrebet was the lone bright spot.

As a sign of how weak this group is, they brought in two consistently productive veterans in Jeff Graham and Webster Slaughter in 1996 and used the first pick in the draft to select Keyshawn Johnson. However, despite adding those players to Chrebet, they still went 1-15.

The team was designed to be a ball control offense. They'd drafted Kyle Brady so they could run two-tight end sets with Brady and former first round pick Johnny Mitchell and had pass catching backs like Adrian Murrell and Richie Anderson on the roster. Unfortunately, they practically neglected the wide receiver position altogether.

Charles Wilson, who entered the season with 72 career catches was the only receiver with any experience whatsoever. Ryan Yarborough and Jeff Sydner entered the year with just nine receptions between them. Chrebet and fellow rookie Curtis Caeser filled the only other two spots.

Conclusions

It's important to emphasize what we've been looking at here. In spite of the headline, we're not automatically looking for "worst" because we've approached this from an angle of how productive the players you've got have been in the past.

So, it's more a measure of experience and how proven your players are than best or worst. A washed-up veteran would score highly on this scale and a hot-shot rookie wouldn't score at all, but it's obvious who you'd rather have.

However, the Jets can't really boast that hot-shot rookie, although they do have several players with potential or that look like they'll be productive in a larger role based on what they've shown so far. In that respect, perhaps it's closer to the 2006 and 2009 groups whereby they might cobble together enough production between them to be competitive, without leaning too heavily on one player.

As for where the 2017 group sits on that scale, if we refer back to Waszak's tweet the numbers compare favorably with some of these other teams as we've demonstrated. However, while I suspect that statistic was supposed to shine an unfavorable light on the Jets, it would have been far more damning to add up the total production including the top two.

199 catches, 2,597 yards, 10 touchdowns. That's all this year's receivers have generated between them now that Decker and Patton are out of the picture. In fact, even if we add in Wilson's numbers, that's only 255 catches and three of those four teams we looked at above had one receiver who had more than 255 catches on his own.

Even without Wilson, it's still way more production than those 1995 receivers had combined for though (just 81 receptions between all of them). It seems that's the gold standard as far as being the worst of the worst is concerned for this franchise.

So, to go back to the question posed in the headline, it remains to be seen how this receiver group will fare. Yes, they are nearly all unproven, although the group perhaps runs a little deeper in terms of how established some of the newer players are than some of those other groups so perhaps that means there's more candidates to step up and prove themselves.

Many factors will come into play, including the quarterback, how well the offensive line protects him and the relative successes of the running game and backs and tight ends making contributions as receivers. The group may even produce more if the team is bad and constantly falling behind in games so they end up airing it out a lot, perhaps against prevent style defenses.

As the 2006 and 2009 teams showed, you can still field a successful team even if the receivers you take to camp don't have much of a history. For that to happen, you inevitably need other areas of your team to excel, though.

Unfortunately, therein lies the problem.