Cincinnati Bengals: Best wide receivers in team history, No. 1

We have been counting down the greatest wide receivers in Cincinnati Bengals franchise history, and today is the best of the best.

Training camp is about to begin in just a couple of days for the Cincinnati Bengals. The wait for real football is getting shorter and shorter. But it’s still the offseason and we’re still waiting.

As we’ve been waiting, it’s been an opportune time to look back at what the Bengals have been historically. Specifically, we’ve been looking at some of the greatest players in Cincinnati’s history. That took us through the quarterbacks and running backs, and now we’ve been going through the wide receivers.

Today we will look at the best of the best, the true top wide receiver in franchise history.

1. Chad Johnson

Mr. Ochocinco himself, the one true choice to be made for leading this list.

The immediate excellence of A.J. Green in the wake of Johnson being traded by the team in the 2011 offseason may have made it sort of easy to forget just how good of a player Johnson was, but it would be an insult to look past him for even a moment when discussing great wide receivers in this team’s history and of the era he played.

Johnson didn’t come out of the gate as a game-changer like Green, but it didn’t take long for him to become exactly that. By his second season he was already a 1,000-yard receiver, and from 2002-09 he would only fall short of that tally once. He would have 65+ receptions seven times, 85+ five times, and 90+ four times. He only reached 10+ touchdowns once, but he was still getting to the end zone often (2002-09 touchdown totals by season: 5, 10, 9, 9, 7, 8, 4, 9).

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Those seasons have lasted the test of time: even as the league has taken a massive jump in the usage and effectiveness of throwing the ball after Johnson’s career was mostly in the books, his production has rarely been challenged, much less surpassed. As great as Green has been to this point in his own career, the top receiving charts in franchise history are dominated by Johnson. Six of his seasons are No. 13 or better in the single-season receiving yardage charts, and five of them are No. 8 or better. Four of the top five belong to Johnson, including the top two, and unlike Green Johnson has led the league in receiving yards (2006).

Of course, Johnson’s impact is not just in the stats. Whereas Green is the biggest reason why Cincinnati was able to be a playoff threat immediately despite the massive turnover which hit that offseason, Johnson was integral to perhaps a more impressive feat: helping Cincinnati break through to the playoffs in 2005.

Remember, at this point, the team was still fighting the demons of perhaps the worst era of football in their franchise history. Prior to 2005, the team hadn’t had a winning season or playoff berth since 1990. Carson Palmer, though showing early signs of being the franchise piece he was chosen to be, still had everything to prove — and if he succeeded, he would be the first success story of numerous attempts to actually find a franchise quarterback at the top of the draft. Marvin Lewis was proving to be the best coach the franchise had since Sam Wyche, but the bar was so low that two 8-8 seasons was a massive improvement.

That 2005 saw Palmer hit his stride in his second season as a starter, and Johnson was an irrevocable necessity to make that happen. This was perhaps Johnson’s best season as a pro: 97 receptions (career-high), 1,432 receiving yards, nine touchdowns, and the best catch rate of Johnson’s career. Had it not been for Palmer’s knee getting obliterated immediately, he and Johnson had a great chance to take down their rivals and make a real playoff run.

That season connects to more of what inherently came with the package of Johnson too: he was not simply a football player, but an entertainer. Right as the NFL really starting becoming the “No Fun League” and cracking down on player celebrations following scores (only took them about a decade to start trying to undo that error), Johnson was at the forefront of creating interesting, fun, and hilarious celebration routines, to the point where discussing what he might do next was a big topic of conversation.

The celebration list is long. He fake-proposed to a cheerleader. He commandeered a cameraman’s camera. He did the riverdance. He used a pylon as a putter to putt the football. He applied CPR to the football. He put on a fake Hall of Fame jacket on the sidelines. He showed off a sign begging the NFL to not fine him. In that 2005 season, he also kept the fun going after the game, with him making public a checklist he kept of the defensive backs who faced him and noting whether or not they won their matchup with him (as you can guess, they rarely came out on top). Plus, who can forget his official name change to be his number?

Whereas some of Green’s appeal as a player is in how he isn’t a vocal presence, Johnson is on the opposite end of the spectrum. It was admittedly sometimes a curse (for his wallet at least), but more often than not it was a blessing. With the post-score celebrations and outwardly boisterous personality, Johnson brought the spotlight on himself and his team in a positive way — a boon for an organization which had long struggled (and still does) to be at the center of any league-wide excitement, and one too often thought of for their 1990s failures and mid-2000s propensity for having players run amok with the law.

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For much of his career, Johnson was a distraction in the best way possible, and paired that with being a top-tier receiver. Though it could rub some people the wrong way at times, and his antics eventually did manage to run their course, when he was at his peak there were few who could claim to be better than him at what he did. Beyond Randy Moss and Terrell Owens, who else is a definitive lock over Johnson when ranking the wideouts from the 2000s? There are strong arguments for guys like Marvin Harrison, Reggie Wayne, Torry Holt, and Larry Fitzgerald ahead of him , but finding him somewhere among them in the top five would be an appropriate answer.

Whatever you call him, his importance and impact on the Bengals and the league in his career cannot be denied. He may one day see Green surpass him on this list, but for at least a couple more seasons Johnson can stand atop the wide receiver hierarchy for the Cincinnati Bengals.