Twitter votes Julio Jones as the best wide receiver in football

We’re in the middle of the offseason, and now is the perfect time to debate who the best players in football really are, in an attempt to pass the time until September.

NFL Network’s standout show “Good Morning Football” has the right idea when it comes to this — they’re polling Twitter to find out whom the people think are the best players at each position. Last week, wide receivers were at the center of that debate, and Atlanta’s Julio Jones was proclaimed to be the best WR in football (according to Twitter).

I’ve got to hand it to GMFB — this was a pretty exciting week in the Twitter polls. Round 1 started out with a bang, as Julio Jones and New Orleans’ Michael Thomas were grouped together in an initial faction of four.

Whether this truly was randomly generated or there was some rigging done to group Jones and Thomas into the same initial group I don’t know, but it worked out beautifully for GMFB. Falcons and Saints fans got into it, and this specific poll tallied more votes than the other three polls, and it had nearly twice as many comments on it as the other three polls combined.

Saints fans did all they could to steal a win for Thomas, who got out to a big early lead. But just like in the Saints’ NFC Championship Game against the Rams, that lead ended up evaporating when Falcons Twitter realized what was going on. Jones won the popular vote in terms of sheer numbers, but GMFB called it a tie to avoid angering Saints fans, who probably would have tried to sue NFL Network if they didn’t get their way. Either way, the top two players in each poll move on in the next round so it was a moot point.

In the quarterfinals, Julio Jones went up against the second best wide receiver in the NFC South — Tampa Bay’s Mike Evans — and handily dispatched him with 85% of the vote.

Saints Twitter was out in full force trying to will the inferior Thomas into a conversation with the big boys at the position. They successfully got him into the semi-final, which was a rematch against Jones.

Saints fans tried to bring out everything including the kitchen sink in this one — citing the one touchdown Thomas had more than Julio in 2018, trying to compare Thomas’ stats in his first three years in the league against Jones’ while conveniently leaving out the fact that No. 11 missed most of his third year due to injury, and of course posting that gif of Thomas flexing after one of his trademarked 6-yard receptions on an out route.

It didn’t work out:

Twitter put a stop to the tomfoolery, although I’m sure Saints fans wanted GMFB to re-do the entire competition. If you’re looking at 2018 in a vacuum, you’ll see that Julio Jones beat Michael Thomas out in every major receiving category except for receptions (meaningless statistic), catch percentage (meaningless statistic), and touchdowns (of which he had one fewer). Jones had 272 more receiving yards (he led the league with 1,677 such yards), and was the most clutch fourth quarter receiver in football.

If you look at the comparison outside of the vacuum of 2018, then Jones has an even stronger argument against Thomas. He’s put up more receiving yards than Thomas’ career high in each of the past five seasons, and has also never tallied less than 60 receiving yards in a playoff game.

Julio took over In each of his two career NFC Championship games — totaling a combined 362 receiving yards and four touchdowns in the contests. In the NFC title game this year, Thomas had four catches for 36 yards, and his biggest contribution was flailing his arms and taking himself out of the play as Drew Brees threw an interception in overtime.

In the finals, Jones faced a worthy opponent in DeAndre Hopkins — the first truly elite wide receiver he went up against in this competition. After a 50/50 tie in the initial poll, GMFB ran it back over the weekend and Julio secured the win:

The polls have spoken — Julio Jones is the best wide receiver in football. Of course, most Falcons fans knew this already, but it’s always nice seeing one of our own get the recognition he deserves.