The 20 Best NFL Wide Receivers of the 2000s, Updated for 2026
Like our running back rankings, this one went up in two halves and then sat still while the position changed around it. Two of the best receivers in football today were not in the league long enough to make the original. Here's the whole twenty in one place, updated through the 2025 season.
Same rule as the backs: careers that ran into the 2000s, judged on the whole body of work. The top five are more or less settled. Everything from about eight down is where the argument lives.
20 through 11
20. Anquan Boldin. Won Offensive Rookie of the Year and kept going for 14 seasons and nearly 14,000 yards. His peak was lower than most names here, but very few receivers were as reliably useful for as long.
19. Chad Johnson. Talked more than anyone and backed most of it up, with more than 11,000 yards across eleven seasons. He did it without a great quarterback or a great offense, which is worth more than it usually gets credited for.
18. Tyreek Hill. The fastest man in the league for most of a decade, and a receiver defenses built entire game plans around. He has cleared 1,200 yards in multiple seasons with two different franchises and two very different quarterbacks.
17. Reggie Wayne. Catching passes from Peyton Manning helps, but Wayne led the league in receiving yards in 2007 and finished above 14,000 for his career, plenty of it after Manning had gone.
16. Steve Smith Sr. Listed at 5 foot 9, and he played like he resented being told so. He won the receiving triple crown in 2005 with 103 catches, 1,563 yards and 12 touchdowns, and he did most of his work with ordinary quarterbacks throwing to him.
15. Torry Holt. The other half of the Greatest Show on Turf's receiving corps. Two seasons above 1,600 yards and eight straight above 1,100, and he is still waiting on Canton after six consecutive years as a Hall of Fame finalist.
14. DeAndre Hopkins. Contested catches were his whole argument, and he won most of them. Multiple 1,500-yard seasons and more than 12,000 career yards, much of it catching passes from whoever the team happened to have that year.
13. Ja'Marr Chase. In 2024 he took the receiving triple crown with 127 catches, 1,708 yards and 17 touchdowns, which only five players have done in the Super Bowl era. He is this high on a short career because the peak is already among the best on this page.
12. Justin Jefferson. Averages 90.2 receiving yards per game for his career, second only to Puka Nacua in NFL history, and his 1,809-yard 2022 is one of the six biggest receiving seasons ever. The counting stats will catch up to the rate stats.
11. Mike Evans. Opened his career with eleven straight 1,000-yard seasons, an NFL record to start a career and a tie with Jerry Rice for the longest streak anyone has managed. The run finally ended in 2025, and it may be the most quietly remarkable stretch on this list.
10 through 1
10. Isaac Bruce. Led the league in receiving yards in 1996 and finished with 15,208 and 91 touchdowns. The third member of the Greatest Show on Turf to appear here, which tells you something about that offense.
9. Marvin Harrison. His 2002 season, 143 catches for 1,722 yards, stood as the single-season reception record for seventeen years. He finished with 1,102 catches, 14,580 yards and 128 touchdowns.
8. Julio Jones. The most feared receiver in football at his peak even though the touchdown totals never matched it. He led the league with 1,871 yards in 2015, in the middle of a six-year run above 1,350 every season.
7. Antonio Brown. Over an eight-year stretch as a full-time starter he put up roughly 11,000 yards and 73 touchdowns, which stands with anyone's peak. How the career ended is its own story and doesn't change what he was in the middle of it.
6. Cris Carter. Started slowly, with no 1,000-yard season until 28, then led the league in catches once and in touchdowns three times. All he did was catch touchdowns, as the line goes, and he caught 130 of them.
5. Larry Fitzgerald. Second all-time in receiving yards with 17,492, and a first-ballot Hall of Famer in the class of 2026. He did it across seventeen seasons without a single prime-years quarterback, which is the great what-if of the position.
4. Terrell Owens. Played for five franchises and produced at all of them, finishing with 153 touchdowns and nearly 16,000 yards, which puts him third all-time in both.
3. Calvin Johnson. Nine seasons, 11,619 yards, 83 touchdowns, and the single-season receiving record of 1,964 yards in 2012, set on a team that was going nowhere. He walked away at 30 with more football left than anyone wanted to admit.
2. Randy Moss. A 23-touchdown season, 156 for his career, 15,292 yards and a rookie year that rewrote what people thought was possible at the position. His surname became a verb, which is a kind of statistic too.
1. Jerry Rice. Most of his career belongs to the 1980s and 1990s, but he played into the 2000s and that qualifies him here. Nearly 23,000 receiving yards and 197 touchdowns across 21 seasons. Nobody is getting close.
Who just missed
Wes Welker and Stefon Diggs were both on the original list and come off this one to make room for Jefferson and Chase. Davante Adams, CeeDee Lamb, A.J. Brown, Hines Ward and Amon-Ra St. Brown all have cases, and in five years this list will need another pass.
Collecting the position
Receivers are an interesting corner of the memorabilia market. The signatures at the top of this list carry real money, but the middle of it is some of the better value in signed football, because demand follows quarterbacks first. We explain how that works in sports memorabilia versus stocks and bonds.
Have a look through our signed football jerseys and signed helmets, and if you're deciding between a custom and a licensed jersey for one of these names, we broke down the difference.
