Quote:
Originally Posted by BossChief
I wonder if there has been a more productive receiver through as many games Bowe has played in to this point.
I bet the list is very short if there is any list at all.
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By Bill Barnwell
Football Outsiders
Before Week 6, Dwayne Bowe was treated like a punch line. Clips of him dropping a sure touchdown pass against the Indianapolis Colts in Week 5 were splattered across highlight shows. The negative opinion of Bowe was so widely held that we had to use a disclaimer when we mentioned Bowe as a good start for fantasy players in Week 6, saying, "He can't drop everything Cassel throws at him."
Since that week, Bowe has been unstoppable. A devastating seven-game stretch has seen him go from punching bag to wrecking ball. Since that game against the Colts, Bowe has caught 49 passes for 733 yards and a whopping 13 touchdowns. Bowe made it to 589 yards in 11 games last season, and he had a total of 16 touchdowns as a pro coming into this season. On Sunday, he pummeled the Seattle Seahawks while having his biggest game yet, going for 13 catches, 170 yards and three touchdowns. He even made a nice weak-side block for Jamaal Charles on a fourth-down run to create a cutback lane and pick up huge yardage. Right now, everything is going Bowe's way.
So, we know Bowe has been good. After the Seahawks game, though, there's a question we've got to ask: Has any wide receiver ever been as good in a seven-game stretch or have we just witnessed history from what seemed to be an unlikely source?
If you include the strike-affected season of 1987, the answer is no. During that 15-game campaign, Jerry Rice had one of the greatest seasons by any player in NFL history, catching 22 touchdown passes in those 15 games. He finished that year with an incredible run, grabbing 16 touchdown passes over the final seven games. That included three three-touchdown games in four weeks.
Throw out the strike season, and Bowe's touchdown mark is unsurpassed since the AFL-NFL merger. His 13 receiving touchdowns in seven games are matched by one other player: Sterling Sharpe, who actually caught 13 in six games. Sharpe hadn't caught a touchdown in any of the previous four weeks before the stretch, and those six games were actually the final ones of his career, as a neck injury forced him into retirement at 29.
Bowe's other totals are impressive but not otherworldly. Marvin Harrison (2002) and Wes Welker (2009) are tied for the record for most catches in one seven-game stretch, each managing to grab 69 receptions during their record runs. Isaac Bruce was able to do almost a full season's work in seven games during the 1995 season. The St. Louis Rams receiver caught 60 passes for a record 986 receiving yards, with seven touchdowns. Bruce ended up with an incredible 1,781 receiving yards by the time the season was over, the second-highest single-season total in NFL history. (Rice finished ahead of him that year with 1,848 yards.) Harrison rode his awesome seven-game stretch to the league record for receptions in a single season, finishing with 143.
Can Bowe go for the record in receiving touchdowns? It's going to be awfully difficult. He now has 14 on the season, and with five games to go he'll need 10 more to get past the 23 receiving touchdowns recorded by Randy Moss in the 2007 season. The good news: His easy schedule continues next week, when he faces the 31st-ranked pass defense of the Denver Broncos.