Is Art Monk a Hall of Famer? Part Four – Playoffs and The Reception Record

This was originally published on February 1st, 2006

Back to Part Three: The Case for Art Monk – Career Peak

Let’s play a little game. Below are the average playoff game stats for John Stallworth, Lynn Swann, Charlie Joiner, James Lofton, Steve Largent and Art Monk. Guess which letter represents Monk’s stat line. Remember that all the players listed besides Monk are in the Hall of Fame.

Hmmm, that’s odd. From all the blabbering you hear out of the Monk HOF opponents, you’d assume he was obviously outshined in the playoffs by all of these other guys. But there’s no stat line that really stands out as being below everyone else. The nay-sayers would have you believe that Monk would have had 1 catch for 6 yards in every playoff game he suited up for. They definitely wouldn’t pick him to be the top player in receptions out of these players. But they’d be wrong. He’s shown on line E. That’s right; Monk had the more receptions per game than any of these other Hall of Famers. More surprisingly, the guy who’s been called “just a possession guy” had more yards per game than all but one player in the list.

If you look at career playoff stats, the playoff myth is further debunked:

The letters shown beside each player correspond to the letters in the 1st chart.

Unfortunately, I can’t get any playoff stats for games before 1975, so I don’t have complete number for any of the other players in the Hall. If you’re curious, Michael Irvin’s numbers are better than Monk. Although, please remember that Irvin played in much more receiver friendly era than Monk. Because of small sample sizes, adjusting the numbers can’t be done accurately for the playoffs.

Most Receptions in a Season:

As you probably know, in 1984 Art Monk set the record for most receptions in a season with 106. And you also know that that record has since been surpassed many different times. Monk’s 106 catches in one season, now ranks tied for 22nd in league history. The current record holder is Marvin Harrison with 143 receptions in 2002. By the way, someone should mention to Peter King that Monk had more yards in his 106 catch season than Randy Moss did in 2002, when he also had 106 catches. Here are the top 25 players:

If you wanted undeniable proof that receptions are much easier to get now than they’ve ever been before, this chart is for you. Every single entry, save for Monk, occurred in 1992 or beyond. This is why using the adjusted numbers are so important. You can either believe that every receiver pre-1992 just wasn’t up to par or you can accept that the adjusted numbers are worthwhile.

Here are the 25 top in receptions in a season using my adjusted figures. Please see part one for an explanation of how these numbers was calculated. For this list, I took the top 20 players in receptions for every season in the Super Bowl Era (post 1967) and adjusted their numbers according to the factors worked out in Part 1. Since we are coming up to Super Bowl XL, at 20 players per year, I adjusted 800 season stat lines to come up with this list of the top 25 players ranked by receptions per season. You can see after adjusting the numbers, Monk’s 1984 season is still tied for the most receptions in a season in NFL history.

Let’s call this the final exhibit in my presentation of why Art Monk should be elected:

Hopefully you enjoyed this series of articles on Monk. I tried to disprove many of the myths about Monk as I could. I should add that I didn’t just pick random stats to prove Monk belongs. When I began compiling the data, I had no idea how it would come out and if the criticisms you hear of Monk were true.

Let’s get the word out and get Monk enshrined.

Continue to 2008 Addition: The Case for Art Monk – Monk vs Cris Carter