Most Career Receiving Yards in NFL History

About This Dataset

NFL wide receivers and tight ends ranked by total career receiving yards in regular season play. Jerry Rice's record of 22,895 career receiving yards is considered one of the most unreachable records in professional football — set across 20 seasons with the San Francisco 49ers and Oakland Raiders, during which he also set the all-time records for receptions and receiving touchdowns, making him the unanimous consensus greatest wide receiver in history.

Analysis

Jerry Rice's staggering total of 22,895 career receiving yards sets a benchmark that seems insurmountable, with Larry Fitzgerald trailing by nearly 5,403 yards at 17,492. This gap illustrates not only Rice's exceptional talent and longevity but also the challenges faced by subsequent generations of receivers. Terrell Owens and Randy Moss, two of the most celebrated players in NFL history, also fall significantly short, with 15,934 and 15,292 yards respectively. The trend indicates that while the game has evolved, the elite receivers of past decades have maintained a formidable lead, suggesting that achieving such milestones in today's fast-paced game is increasingly difficult.

Source: Wikipedia

Key Findings

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Jerry Rice leads in Career NFL Receiving Yards with 22,895.

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Average Career NFL Receiving Yards: 16,283 · median: 15,250.

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Gap: Jerry Rice is 1.7× larger than Torry Holt.

Most Career Receiving Yards in NFL History

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Data Insights Below

Data Insights

Numbers, trends & sources behind this chart

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Data Points

8 categories · 1 year

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Top Value

22,895

Jerry Rice

Career NFL Receiving Yards · All Time

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Metrics

Career NFL Receiving Yards

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Period

All Time

Single year snapshot

Methodology & source

Data source: Wikipedia
Coverage: 8 entities · 8 observations
Measure: Career NFL Receiving Yards
Last updated: 27 July 2026
Compiled by: The ANYSTAT team, from the source above

How the figures are calculated

Values are shown as reported by the source. Nothing is rescaled, rebased or converted — the only changes are thousand separators and decimals shown to two places.
Entities are ranked highest-first on their value.

Rankings & Full Data

8 records · Career NFL Receiving Yards · ranked by All Time

✓ 8 sourced

#	Category	All Time
🥇	Jerry Rice	22,895
🥈	Larry Fitzgerald	17,492
🥉	Terrell Owens	15,934
4	Randy Moss	15,292
5	Isaac Bruce	15,208
6	Tony Gonzalez	15,127
7	Tim Brown	14,934
8	Torry Holt	13,382