“So how good was Don Maynard really? He had an HOF QB throwing to him, yet he was only a first-team All-AFL pick once, never all-NFL anything, and only a four-time AFL All-Star. Not to put too fine a point on it, but through most of Maynard's best years he wasn't even the best wide receiver on his team. George Sauer was a four-time AFL All-Star and a first-team All-AFL pick twice before walking away from the game after six years to wear a turtleneck and channel Tom Wolfe. Maynard was there for the Al Dorow years and hung around through most of the Namath era and was rewarded with an HOF bust, though he was clearly inferior to Sauer when the two played together. Maynard had speed and hands but was not a disciplined route-runner. Sauer had speed and hands and ran routes. Maynard was good and durable but clearly not great. In that respect he resembles Harold Jackson or Isaac Curtis, two receivers who are close to the Hall of Fame but not in, and not likely to get in.”
Permit me the luxury of reconsidering.
Certain aspects of the above statement are indisputable. Maynard was not well thought of during his career. For half of his career peak he was the most productive player on a woefully unproductive team. He was a headstrong west Texas cowboy adrift in New York City, continually criticized for running undisciplined routes and having so-so hands. (“A stubborn nonconformist who fumbled,” was Sports Illustrated’s take.) When Joe Namath arrived, it was the passes that were spectacular, not so much the pass-catcher.
But if you accept the notion that Don Maynard was the overrated split end catching passes from the overrated quarterback Joe Namath, then the question is, “How bad was Don Maynard? Otis Taylor bad? Gary Garrison bad? Dee Mackey bad? Jerry LeVias bad?”
Fortunately, there are ways to answer that question.
First, I took all the Hall of Fame wide receivers from the late 1950s through the early 1970s, plus a few others, and broke down their stats. I focused on four things: yards per catch first, then receptions, then touchdowns, and finally yards.
The order’s important. Since I don’t have a stat that measures targets, yards per catch is the only measure of a receiver’s effectiveness. A quarterback passes the ball in a calculated risk that he will gain a significant amount of yards, mitigating those instances where the passes falls incomplete and gains no yards. (Or, to revisit the Woody Hayes Perspective On Passing, those instances where the second bad thing happens and the quarterback throws an interception.) A quarterback that completes two-thirds of his passes for an average of 10 yards per completion has reached a state of perpetual offensive motion. He could conceivably move up and down the field at will. If a given receiver delivers 15 yards a catch compared to an average receiver’s 10, he’s much more efficient and therefore much more valuable.
Here’s what I mean. Lance Alworth averaged 19.5 yards per catch during the peak of his career. Lionel Taylor averaged 12.7. Taylor had to catch 50 percent more passes than Alworth to match Bambi’s production. Not surprisingly, Alworth was and is considered to be the more valuable of the two receivers.
You could argue that by catching more passes for fewer yards per catch Taylor was actually more productive, since he kept more drives going, but the counter to that is first, Alworth also caught more balls per year, and second, Alworth also had twice as many touchdowns. Taylor was nowhere near as productive as Alworth, and that’s why Taylor is not prime HOF material.
The other reason to look at yards per catch is that it takes the quarterback out of the equation to an extent. Maybe Lionel Taylor’s production suffered because Frank Tripucka and an assortment of dead-armed sphere-chuckers were entrusted with getting him the ball – but, hey, every time someone got Taylor the ball he churned out fewer yards than most tight ends. Sure, it could be that the Broncos of the ‘60s ran a lot of underneath routes because those were the only routes the quarterback could throw, but the production of Al Denson and others suggests otherwise. Lionel Taylor simply wasn’t much of a RAC guy. If you’re looking for a semi-contemporary contemporary, think Art Monk. If you prefer a contemporary who’s truly contemporary, try Hines Ward.
Receptions are important because they show how many times a receiver was achieving that big RAC. Alworth is the top receiver of the ‘60s because he caught as many passes as anyone for more yards and touchdowns than anyone. Conversely, it took Bob Hayes extra time to make it to Canton because he only caught 45 passes a year in his best years, even though his RAC and TDs were just a tick behind Alworth’s. Also remember that the pass was still largely a gambler’s play in the ‘60s; the notion of the pass as a tool for extending possession was just being formulated and accepted.
Finally, touchdowns reflect the ultimate goal of throwing passes and gaining yards: winding up in the end zone. Not to bash Lionel Taylor, who happens to be one of my favorite players from the AFL days, but five TDs a season on top of everything else pretty much deep-sixes his chances of getting to Canton. On the other hand, anything between eight and 10 TDs sustained over a seven-to-10-year career gets you noticed.
So enough of the preliminaries. Where does Don Maynard rank? Let’s go to the chart:
(Just so you know, we went apples-to-apples here. We compared continuous peak years, throwing out the tentative first years and the on-the-skids last years. These figures show what you might reasonably expect from these receivers when they were in the prime of their careers.)
This chart does no favors to the receivers who aren’t in the Hall of Fame. Harold Jackson, for all his longevity, never got much better than this. Jack Snow, who isn’t on the chart, posted some great yards-per-catch numbers but just never caught enough balls. Think of him as a poor man’s Bob Hayes, with a guest shot on The Beverly Hillbillies. The same, minus the Hollywood, applies to the underrated Carroll Dale. Ten years later they could have been Cliff Branch. Otis Taylor had decent RAC numbers, but again, he was never the target the way Maynard or Alworth was.
There are a few mitigating circumstances to consider, but not many. Hayes and Maynard were very much alike in the sense that they were old-school bomb receivers, more of a piece with Tom Fears and Harlon Hill than the Charlie Joiners and Jerry Rices to come. They were not modern receivers, but no one said they had to be.
Considering durability, competition and production, Don Maynard is one of the best three wide receivers of the ‘60s. Forgive me for suggesting otherwise.
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