25 Players in 25 Years: Bill Barnwell on Nos. 3-1

00:00:02
Speaker 1: Welcome to the sixth and final episode of the Best twenty five Players of the last twenty five years. NFL Daily has been doing it, and I'm gonna have to say it. We're doing it well, and we're gonna wrap with one of the best in the game, my friend Bill Barnwell.

00:00:22
Speaker 2: And you got a.

00:00:23
Speaker 1: Nice slot in the schedule. Bill, you're doing the top three players of the last twenty five years?

00:00:30
Speaker 3: Was that an L cool J reference in the intro?

00:00:32
Speaker 1: It was not planned and it was, but that is I think perfect. And another guy who's been doing it, you know, for twenty five years plus, I ask.

00:00:40
Speaker 3: Someone who was born in Queen's I feel like that that represents speed quite well.

00:00:45
Speaker 2: I love it.

00:00:45
Speaker 1: We got three more players to talk about. Our listeners could probably guess at this point who they are before we even get into it. Bill, would you have anyone different in your top three? Would you have anyone different?

00:00:57
Speaker 3: Are pretty clear top three, and certainly it feels like, you know, it's really easy to pick quarterbacks, and yet I think we've kind of been spoiled because we've had three quarterbacks who have been so transcendent, especially you know, two of the three guys we're gonna mention being so incredibly successful that we almost sort of take it for granted that that's just sort of something you're gonna have in the NFL. And history tells us that is not the case. And I want to be surprised if ten to fifteen years from now, maybe when NFLDLI is doing fifty for fifty, we see there is not that sort of truly transcendent, constantly successful quarterback that we saw at least two of these three guys b over the past twenty five year.

00:01:39
Speaker 1: Yeah maybe, I mean I would be seventy one years old at that point.

00:01:43
Speaker 2: So cross our fingers. Let's go to number three.

00:01:46
Speaker 3: Number three, Peyton Manning.

00:01:49
Speaker 4: Madden facing pressure. Matten, what til he takes your hands?

00:01:52
Speaker 2: Some fires down field? Here's a light over the seat? What's you going out of a five touchdown?

00:01:58
Speaker 4: There? We're coming. Peyton.

00:02:00
Speaker 2: He felt the pressure, he took a hip and was able to fight a white old him.

00:02:06
Speaker 4: Legie, Wayne, that's a fifty three yard pass.

00:02:10
Speaker 3: Fun.

00:02:10
Speaker 5: I look back on my NFL career, I'll know without a doubt that I gave everything I had to help my teams walk away with a win. There were other players who are more talented. But there was no one who could outprepare me out of pay his mouth of just playing chess with you, and a lot of people play checkers with him.

00:02:27
Speaker 3: This regard the audible, Now disregard the audible.

00:02:30
Speaker 2: Come it is some plan of them.

00:02:31
Speaker 4: Read different right Wisconsin.

00:02:32
Speaker 6: Goro's Homeroom, God, I've got Jillius Thomas. There Thomas with a touchdown And there's the record Peyton Manning's fifty first touchdown pass of the year. Move over, Tom Brady, that chair belongs to Peyton mann Thought.

00:02:46
Speaker 5: A good fight. I finish my football race, and after eighteen years, it's time. God bless all of you, and God bless football.

00:02:58
Speaker 1: No one talks and plays quite like Peyton Manning, and no one could say God bless football and actually make me feel emotional like. He straddles the perfect line between total devotion and absolute love for the sport. You know, very you know, very non cheesiness almost, but it doesn't matter because he like, he means it so much and you could see it like in everything that he did.

00:03:24
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean a player who did not need to come back from his neck injury, did not need to have that second Roun with the Broncos. Could have very easily said, Hey, I am good. I have won a Super Bowl. I have every record in the Colts. You know, pretty much every record on them, but exactly every record, but certainly plenty of records with the Colts, accomplished everything I want to accomplish. Could have left the game on instead came back and had an incredible second run with the Broncos that was depicted mostly there. I I really think Peyton is so hard to judge because he came up in the era of Brady, and we're gonna see that with guys from a We're going to talk about Patrick Mahomes later on in the show, and guys like Josh Allen and Lamark Jackson and judging them in context with with Patrick Mahomes and his success. You were there, Greg, I was there. Other people were not there. I feel like people forget how much of the just strictly how often those Brady Manning discussions occurred early on in Manning's career, and then Manning of course sort of puts them aside by winning two championships, including one where he has an incredible comeback in derails Brady along the way.

00:04:33
Speaker 2: Right.

00:04:33
Speaker 1: It's crazy because you say that he lived in the Brady era, and I think how I experienced it in some ways for a while was it was more the Manning era, and Peyton Manning was obviously better, faster, and won more individual awards than Tom Brady did. He still did seven All Pros first team and that was in eleven years, including the year that he was out with the neck injury. So that's just a crazy unprecedented of being the best quarterback in the game over a decade, plus five MVPs to three more second teams in a few more like top five MVP votes, So he kind of was the individual guy.

00:05:12
Speaker 2: And as late as.

00:05:14
Speaker 1: The Seahawks Super Bowl that Peyton Manning played in, and I think that was a big turning point for his career and for the Brady Manning debate, which you know, I think ultimately Brady kind of put an end to. But at that point, Bill, I want to direct you to the front of NFL dot Com that very day. I remember there was a column by one of the best to do it, Judy Bautista, who was opening like, if Manning wins this game, it kind of cements him as the goat because at that point in their careers, they're already late thirties, like Tom Brady and Manning are both late thirties, and you're just not even thinking what else Brady could possibly do at that point, and that if he had won that one, because at that point he had just beaten Brad and Brady hadn't won a title in ten years, it kind of felt like all the individual awards plus another title against a great defense like Seattle would put Manning over the top. So it is a really interesting time and way to think about it, because that is deep into their careers that it was still very much up for grabs.

00:06:18
Speaker 3: Yeah, and for whatever issues Manning had in the postseason earlier in his career, we did see some great games from him as time went on, to comeback win against the patriotsry that they went to win their first Super Bowl against the Bears, I think one of the great lost games or forgotten games in NFL history in two thousand and nine, playing that Jets defense with flying golrivs that Peak defense AFC Championship game. He goes for I think three seventy seven and three touchdowns on what might be one of the two or three best defenses of the past twenty five years and propels in the Super Bowl where they did lose to the Saints. Seat obviously had some games that weren't as impressive as well, But I think that's story, that idea that he wasn't able to do it in the postseason he was able to eventually put to the aside, and then of course the second Super Bowl run, he was, I mean, a shell of himself and still managed to do just enough and protect the football on way to winning that second title. And so he becomes difficult to sort of measure because I felt like, you know, he was more of a moving target with Brady, because there was so much success early on in his career, he became defined really quickly. So what Tom Brady does. His win Peyden was more. It was more inconsistent. There was more of a you know, yes, this guy is great, but yes, the story we told about him in two thousand and two is different than it is in two thousand and seven, Different in twenty eleven, different in twenty fifteen. He evolved more. I think in some ways, even though Brady might have evolved more on the field as a player.

00:07:46
Speaker 1: It's such a fascinating comparison because all of that is totally true. And yet when you think about who was the most consistent, I would say player at any position over the course of what I think is the most valuable way to evaluate players, which is like a sixteen game regular season sample. Think, I think it has to be Peyton Manning. And I know wins are not a quarterback stat, but he was like a walking twelve win season that the whole like football outsider's idea that offense is more consistent is almost it's partly on Peyton Manning, you know what I mean, Like he had a I think it was a run.

00:08:27
Speaker 2: I wrote it down.

00:08:28
Speaker 1: Yeah, ten years out of eleven they won twelve games, which is is just outrageous. And I think it's okay in this discussion. And I don't want to just talk about what's different because we're crowny. I'm the third best player of the last twenty five years. He is one of the greats of the greats. But I think it is okay to point out that the numbers did go down in the playoffs overall, and that it was a big enough sample size for him. For Mahomes, spoiler for Brady and that they've played so much in the playoffs that the decline in Manning's numbers in the playoffs are significant enough to matter. But what also matters is his influence bill on the game. And I just think him orchestrating at the line of scrimmage and the way that their offense was simple but complex in the same way was just not just one of a kind, but a throwback to an era that he revered, you know, Johnny Unitas at a quarterback being kind of the orchestrator and really was a little different than the Bill wallsherer where the quarterback was running the offense that was called, or the Brett Favre type of play where it's more about improvisational And this was Peyton Manning, I think having an influence on the game at large, including Tom Brady. I think he was actually an influence on Tom Brady and then certainly Aaron Rodgers and Mahomes and Joe Burrow. That like the type of quarterbacks that we see now.

00:09:56
Speaker 3: Yeah, Rogers especially, that feels like the most obvious one to me, because we talked about Rogers last year with some of the criticisms of how he wanted more of a an antiquated offense. He wanted more static stuff with the line of scrimmage. He wanted to pick people apart, you know, not with using motion, not with you know, turning his back and play. Actually they had a little bit of that, you know. He wanted static defenses and wanted to pick defenses apart. That's what Peyton Manning wanted too, Like he wanted answers for his protection. He wanted to know, okay, what are our answers when when we're going to get bits from certain sides. But he did really want to get to the line of scrimmage and then figure things out from there. And it's hard to overstate maybe how simplistic the Colts offense was, Like the sheer number of plays they ran. They might have like eight ten past concepts in their playbook. They might have, you know, a few runs there, mostly his own team in an hour where a lot of teams were primarily zone teams. But it was how those plays meshed together with Tom Moore's influence, how Peyton called them at the line, how he knew, you know, how he read them so quickly, how they had stuff at the line they could to and changed to uh if it wasn't a great defensive look. He got them in good looks so often at the line of scrimmage that then he was so often facing really simplistic or really basic coverages which he then exploited and he had great players take advantage of those as well. Now I actually thought about this, I think, I want to know what you think about it with paid and you know, I think by this idea of Okay, how would a Pannamenting offense look today? How would he play today? Not that it's been that long since he retired, but it's still been about a decade and defenses have evolved a bit. You know, would he do as well in an era where defenses are much better at disguising their intentions as much more post snap movement you have you know, you have more sim pressures, uh, more stuff that you're trying to confuse and disguise your looks and take advantage of weaknesses and protection. Maybe he struggles with that. Maybe he benefits from playing in an era where you know, when you hit those big plays, maybe you're hitting more big plays. And this is a guy who I think one of the criticist. So one of the things that happened in that offense was there were moments where he laid out guys over the middle of the field. You think about Austin Colley's career, Dallas Clark comes to mind as well. Guys were getting hit a lot over the middle of the field. That's not happening nowadays. You're not taking those signits over the middle of the field. Maybe he'd have more advantages on those scene rats on throws over the middle of the field, on those digs. I think it would have been a different kind of quarterback, But I still think he would have been great.

00:12:22
Speaker 1: Yes, I thought about that question too, because you just don't see a quarterback. You don't see guys coming up from college with the lack of athleticism that meaning or great Brady had. It just doesn't happen in terms of the types of speed. But I still think he would be as successful. I just don't think football will ever evolve to a point where a guy who can win before the snap and after the snap and throw as accurately and prepare with his receivers in such a way will ever be totally out of style. Maybe naturally, he would somehow be more athletic, because like those quarterbacks just still happen. He would just maybe be working on his body more. I don't even know what would be different, But you said how the defenses are just so much more complicated now in all the different things, and that's absolutely true, And in a way, I think that would make him greater because the quarterback that can understand and be all of that and almost get outside of a like McVeigh tree type of understanding of one to two to three, I think their intellect would be even more of an advantage. So I still think he would just be Peyton Manning. And when you think about great players, Bill, you think about who makes the players around them better. And I think that's on game day and I think that's in their practice regime too. And you just hear from every Colts player and the attention to detail of like how on top of things they had to get to be with Bayton man and Clyde Christensen, his longtime coach, said he hated showing up for a meeting with Bayton Manning and just feeling unprepared. Like coaches going against Manning, they don't talk about going again. Jim Caldwell or Tom Moore, Rex Ryan and Belichick talk about it gave them nightmares that have to go against Manny.

00:14:06
Speaker 2: He was essentially the coach.

00:14:07
Speaker 1: But think of all the players that he made better, like Jeff Is Jeff Saturday winning six to seven All pros, or Tarik Glennon, like he made their offensive lineman better with the way that he got rid of the ball. But like you can go through every guy who caught the ball from him, Reggie Wayne and Marvin Harrison, but also like a Damarius Thomas and Eric Decker, like Eric Decker was at his best, uh.

00:14:27
Speaker 3: Showed and Julius Thomas clip in the video in the.

00:14:31
Speaker 1: Introduction right like that, that to me is kind of the ultimate quarterback and football great ability is to make guys better. So I'm glad you brought up the Broncos in that second act. Let's let's actually listen to a play with a guy just talked about the late great Damarrius Thomas.

00:14:50
Speaker 4: Third and one three going to police.

00:14:54
Speaker 2: Good, Thomas Good, touch down.

00:15:00
Speaker 7: Sixty three yards, take none.

00:15:03
Speaker 5: It's the all time highest scoring offense in the history of Pro football.

00:15:10
Speaker 8: And many authors a beauty sixty three orders to Marius Thomas.

00:15:16
Speaker 2: He has so many records.

00:15:17
Speaker 1: Bill I sort of forget that one highest scoring offense in history. Yeah, that's a great example of like when you think of his quote unquote shortcomings like his mobility or whatever, and like arm strength compared to the best of the best, like that show that is a great clip to show how great he was with the subtle movements in the pocket and throwing what he needed to at the last second, and that with his timing and his anticipation, maybe the best anticipator in NFL history.

00:15:41
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, you don't need to move a ton if you know where you're going with the football. You might really have to take a step or two in the right direction to make those throws. You don't need to scramble create a structure if you're so good within structure that nobody can stop you. And you brought up Belichick and Rex Ryan and that preparation. I think what mad it so tough to play Peyton Manning and play the Colts is just that it wasn't like they had new stuff. It wasn't like, you know, the offense changed from year. Do you remember Chris Brown, my colleague a Grantline at the time, wrote a great piece about how the Broncos basically just installed the Colts offense after he struggled early in that run in Denver. Get a couple again against the Falcons where I think it threw a pick six or two early on, and they were struggling, and they just got back to the same concepts to Colts are and and they were just fine and had one of the best seasons NFL history the following year on offense. That to me, I think made him so tough to stop because you really knew what was coming. It was really never a disguise thing. It was just, you know, you were not able to stop these concepts because they were so good at running them, they were so efficient, they were quietly good running the ball because he'd always get them in good spots to run the football. And then you know, he was getting rid of the ball so quickly that it was really hard to take him down consistently. So he really negated the pass rush in a lot of ways. He was you know, the players he was working with, especially in Indian for he had some players that you know he developed relationships, but an Indie, I mean he woke with Marvin Harrison for so long, Raggie Wayne for so long, Dallas Clark for so long.

00:17:08
Speaker 1: Brandon stokely in both spots. Yeah, he was great in both spots.

00:17:14
Speaker 3: You had had that core of guys that I felt like, you know, they just had such strong relationships that he knew they were going to make the right adjustments to their routes every single time.

00:17:23
Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:17:23
Speaker 1: I just think, you know, hearing that clip to started to just like no one loved the game more. And when I think of influence too, I do think of the way he carried himself. It would drive our friend Chris Westling crazy. He thought he thought Peyton Manning ushered in this entire new era of the quarterback as boring spokesperson. I always thought he was like a little hard on Payton. I just think that's who he was, was this kind of folksy guy, but he also knew. He also knew from his dad to what the NFL was like, and I think he was always very careful not to take like a wrong step. And then we saw with the commercials and with SNL and now with the Manning cast that he's like he's just is like football. If I had to think of like one person that's football, it's it's probably Peyton Manny yeah.

00:18:11
Speaker 3: I mean he feels like the football dad, like he is the he he is universally coaching all of us to learn a little more about football, and that's I think, you know, his legacy is going to be this guy who, you know, I I think really represented football in this generation even more than the people we're going to talk about, because you know, as good as they were on the field, it feels like, you know, we're going to be hearing Hayden talk about football for another thirty years at this point, I think he's going to be the closest thing that this generation has to a John Madden maybe in terms of you know, how how frequently and how well he talks about the game. And so that may turn out to be totally false. I might just be you know, being a good company man here and suggesting that you should turn on the Manning cast. But realistically, I think, you know, he's become such a ubiquitous figure after his career in a way that even Tom Brady, who was doing commentary for Fox every week now is not.

00:19:09
Speaker 1: And don't get it twisted like he was cold as a player. He won five freaking MVPs like that, thirty five to fourteen comeback in four minutes against the Bucks.

00:19:20
Speaker 2: That stands out to me. They were a walking comeback.

00:19:22
Speaker 1: They were one of the best comeback teams because they were such an explosive quick offense compared to what their competition was. So just one of the best to do it. Let's take a quick break and we'll.

00:19:36
Speaker 2: Come back and reveal number two.

00:19:50
Speaker 1: Back on NFL Daily's Best twenty five players of the last twenty five years, you probably figured out our next guy, a guy who on the Around the NFL podcast, it only took about one season as a starter before we started comparing him to Jordan's.

00:20:08
Speaker 3: Number two.

00:20:09
Speaker 2: Patrick Mahomes go out there, dag that goes every day.

00:20:15
Speaker 8: You got for the gods?

00:20:17
Speaker 2: Do you?

00:20:17
Speaker 8: And we're home by the way to get Away.

00:20:20
Speaker 6: Burst and Gold Mahomes wings hissed the humping Jack Pop Kansas City and.

00:20:28
Speaker 4: The game running drive of the Home's career.

00:20:31
Speaker 8: He's been waiting for his win super Bowls, but he's never had it.

00:20:33
Speaker 2: And in overtime he is the best.

00:20:36
Speaker 3: He is the standard.

00:20:37
Speaker 2: You're Michael Jordan wrings it again and then winning football games makes you a villain.

00:20:41
Speaker 9: We're gonna go keep going out there and doing it.

00:20:43
Speaker 4: Chiefs needs some Mahomes magic launches down the.

00:20:52
Speaker 7: Middle hill open caught.

00:20:55
Speaker 4: And they get it. Kansas City to pick play.

00:20:59
Speaker 3: What Tom has done historic, but if there was a player who could do it, it would be.

00:21:04
Speaker 9: Patrick Madam bless being a lot of great football teams, with a lot of great coaches in a great organization, and I just try to maximize every moment because you never know what's gonna be your last one. I know I'm a long way from Tom, so I'll try to do whatever I can to get close to that.

00:21:17
Speaker 1: Patrick Mahomes coming in at number two and that clip Bill has a moment in Patrick Mahomes's first Super Bowl where it's third and fifteen, they're down twenty to ten, and at that point in the game, he's thrown two picks without a touchdown, and it's a reminder with Manning, with Brady, with Rogers and Breeze, who we've talked about. The margins are so slim, like nothing was promised, but Patrick Mahomes has so many of those moments where it is third and fifteen and he makes a throw. Just few others in NFL history he could make Greg.

00:21:54
Speaker 3: I remember that game very well, because I picked the Niners to win that game, same ol, so smart up to that exact moment, and then I just the ball dropped, and I was just, oh, no, I'm going to have to spend the next whatever minutes of this game hoping Patrick Mahomes doesn't do exactly what Patrick Mahomes does. And I swore in that moment I would never pick against the Chiefs again in the Super Bowl. Just a game where he was not good the vast majority of that game and then lights out. I think he had sent me Watkins for a touchdown pass later on in that game. And I actually I'm interested in what you think hearing what Tony Romo said, because Romo described that drive against the Niners as like a signature drive for Patrick Mahomes, and I would certainly say that's fair. I think that throw what Peter King found. The name was it wasp? The name of that Yes, you know that third and fifteen wasp throw maybe one of his most famous throws, that scramble for a touchdown against the Tennessee Titans in the AFC Championship game earlier that year, Maybe one of his most famous runs. But it's interesting that I don't know that we have like a signature Mahomes food.

00:23:06
Speaker 1: In some ways, I thought that was a little bit of a stretch because he was like he finally did it over time, he finally got the game when he drive, And I guess that's true, but I think of the drive against the Eagles. You gotta get points to win the super Bowl, and he is not one hundred percent, and he does what he's done so many times in his career, which is get a big time run in the spot that you actually needed. While we're talking about it, let's look at another one of those earlier in that run the.

00:23:34
Speaker 8: Second and nine Kansas City in the red zone at the tux in fifteen yard line, Mahomes on the far hash in the pockets, stepping up and trying to squeeze through the stakes on the street ten fuck the zone, touchdown, tail zone City on that bad ankle, stepping through the pocket, running all the way to the sweet nectar of the young zone.

00:23:56
Speaker 1: It's just so reminiscent of so many moments, Like when you think Mahomes is down a little bit, I said it. I remember early even in his first season. And we'll kind of back up and talk about like his journey. But yeah, even in his first season, he always ran just fast enough to kill you. Like every first down run he had felt like it was an absolute killer, and that shouldn't get lost in the total alchemy of like what has made him so great.

00:24:26
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think his instinct for when to run, how much space he has on the sideline, how much space he has to pick up a first down, is just so impeccable. You certainly see a lot of guys who are faster, a lot of guys are who are more athletic and who can run for first downs and do so, and there's something wrong with doing that. But I just think Mahomes's ability to sort of figure out, Okay, I have exactly enough space to get ten yards perround on the sideline at this exact moment, and then that decisiveness to go is I think a really sort of unique and special skill for him. I actually think I want to go back even further greg what was going on with him before the draft, because obviously he was taken before or sorry after mitchter Bisky of the Chicago Bears and then Deshaun Watson who was drafted by the Texans. But this was a player who It's not like the paidon Manning situation, where yes, Bill Walsh famously you know, debated whether Ryan Leaf was better than paid in Manning before the Colts took him with the first overall pick. But with Mahomes, when you read the stuff that was written about him at the time, this was not a guy who had a first round bread. In a lot of places, there were a lot of teams who, at least before the draft were saying to people publicly, this is a Day two pick. This is even a Day three pick. In some places there were not. There was not that sort of overwhelming oh my god, this is a generational quarterback prospect. And I think that speaks to how talented he is. Obviously landing in the right spot help with the Chiefs playmakers and Andy Reid, but his ability to grow and evolve and adapt, where even in that first year he mostly signed on the bench before playing the final leak of the year, he really evolved as a quarterback. And the guy who showed up that first season in twenty eighteen, where he really played from week one onward, looked different in a lot of ways from the guy who saw at Texas.

00:26:17
Speaker 1: Tech I'm glad you brought that up and that first start. I wrote an entire huge offseason column about it because if listeners remember Alex game, yeah, it was against the Broncos. It was Week seventeen, and the Chiefs started Alex Smith in the playoffs, but they wanted to give Mahomes one start, and they actually had their offensive coordinator and their play callers start prepping for the playoffs while Andy Reid and the quarterbacks coach at the time, Mike Kafgar was going to be the quarterbacks coach, prepped Mahomes for that season finale. We actually had him on the Around the NFL podcast, Andy Reid just a few months later.

00:26:58
Speaker 10: When they played their starters now Denver did Yeah, was starting defense, and I went into that game feeling like we could score any time, and once we got in there, I felt the same thing. He gave you that confidence and he made some plays that you saw him do. These no look throws. It he doesn't practice, but we kind of go out it's practice. He starts doing those in the game, I'm going, WHOA, Okay, that's something special.

00:27:19
Speaker 1: So he had a throw at DeMarcus Robinson in that game that was just absolutely crazy. His first completion as a pro was a thirty five yard like frozen rope. I think it was to the opposite hash And I love that quote from Reid who just said we started feeling like we could we could score at any moment, and I think the confidence was there. And Alex Smith deserves a lot of credit because Mahomes and Reed have gone out of their way to just say over and over how much he helped Mahomes in that year. So he ends up coming in as a first time starter the next year. And that's the thing what is unique about Mahomes compared to Manning or Brady or really anyone, and it's why he's number two. And we can get in the comparison between him and Manning because he obviously doesn't have the same amount of first team All pros or MVPs.

00:28:08
Speaker 2: But what he did Bill was be.

00:28:11
Speaker 1: The best quarterback in the league from like the minute he actually started playing. His first three starts, he had three touch thirteen touchdowns, no interception, and was averaging like over three hundred yards like that first playoff run. He has those crazy comebacks where they you know, he had twenty four points in the fourth quarter against Bill Belichick's defense, and the only reason you know, they didn't win a Super Bowl potentially that year is they lost the coin toss there to Tom Brady. So he was epic even in that playoff run. And that's what's unique I think about him compared to a Peyton Manny who took till year six to win that playoff game, compared to Tom Brady, who took till about year you know, five or six as a pro to really become like a plus plus plus starter even though he was winning titles. Mahomes came in and he was just like the man from minute one.

00:28:59
Speaker 3: Yes, I mean it was fully formed, really from that first start. I actually watched it against the Chargers before we hopped on, and you know, just seeing stuff that they were running. They run a bunch of RPOs, which you would expect. They were in the triple for a game with Mahomes, which you know, Alex Smith is a underrated athlete, but I don't know that they were running the triple all that much. With Alex Smith at quarterback there, he was improvising. He was making stuff happen, and a lot of it was deeper stuff. And having watched Mahomes throughout his career now and paying such close attention, I think what's fascinating to me is how he has evolved as a quarterback because I think guess Peyton Manning did evolve, you know, in some ways as he moved on, but he was really, I think, so good and so consistent running the offense. That was very consistent over the course of his time in Indianapolis. Tom Brady did evolve. Will talk about that in a little bit, But over the course of five or six years, really Patrick Maholmes has gone from being the guy who torments teams deep having to be a guy who throws underneath the fast majority of the time. He's thirty fifth in air yards per attempt over the last three years. Only Daniel Jones that has has fewer air yards per throw. And he's thrived doing that because he's he's grown patient. He is the guy who, you know, yes, he can still throw deep, he can still make those throws. He still has the arm strength to do that. It's not like he's not physically capable of doing that. But whether it's losing Tyreek Hill, whether it's the you know, defense is being absolutely terrified if him burning them deep of not having maybe the best offensive line of the best tackles giving him the time to make those throws and spots. They've been incredibly consistent and picking up third downs at him at historical outlier rates over the last few years. And that's Mahomes. It's not you know, Travis Kelsey plays a big role, but it's not Travis Kelsey. It's not the run game. It's Mahomes and his ability to create a structure, his ability to read defenses, his ability to take what they're giving him, which you know, even for someone like Josh Allen, who I think is a Hall of Fame caliber quarterback, he struggles with at times. Patrick Mahlmes has been able to do that and do that so quickly early on in his career, and I think that's only going to It only just proves again how fast of a developer he is and how quickly he grows as a player.

00:31:09
Speaker 2: Right.

00:31:09
Speaker 1: I think if there's an underrated part of his game, I don't know if anything's underrated at this point, but it has to be just a decision making. He's just become such an elite decision maker as a young player, and I don't think that.

00:31:20
Speaker 2: Gets talked about first.

00:31:21
Speaker 1: Now that said, we're taping this at a very unique time in his career, and it was why I struggled with him two or three.

00:31:28
Speaker 2: My initial instinct was two.

00:31:30
Speaker 1: And then you look at the numbers and five MVPs for Mannings and this exercise bill was supposed to be about greatness, who actually just think was the best player? Wasn't about counting stats totally. It wasn't about just racking up numbers. It was the highest, the high excellence, and we're taping this after two years where he hasn't been at his best. I think what's been unique about Peyton Manning? I mean Patrick Mahomes And yes, I know I'm saying that after like he wins a Super Bowl and gets to another Super Bowl, so it's all relative, But I think what was unique about him was I think after one year as a starter, he was the best player I'd ever seen come into the league. After two years of as a starter, three years, four years, five years, I was like, that's the best three years to start is great?

00:32:14
Speaker 2: Best four years?

00:32:15
Speaker 1: Now the last two If for some reason he stayed at or around that level statistically moving forward, it would be a very different career. I don't think he's played his very best over the sixteen game regular season in the last two regular seasons. Now the playoffs are a different story. Obviously struggled in the Super Bowl last year, but unlike Manning and Brady and almost anyone else to play the game in history, like, his numbers have gone up significantly in the playoffs as good as they are in the regular season. Like his rate stats are even crazier, and they're great in the regular season too. We might as well go over him before I throw it back to you here. He is number one in passing yards per game in NFL history. He is number one in adjusted yards per attempt in NFL history, and number two in adjusted yards per attempt at NFL history, number one in success rate. So he is number one in a million great categories. And he's got the two MVPs, got the three Super Bowl MVPs. He's got one second team MVP All Pro as well. So it's not like the numbers aren't great, Bill, but it is. It is weird because Manning and Brady, their best parts of their career actually started right about now. For Mahomes, like the best part of Manning's career really started around twenty seven to twenty eight. I would say the best part of Brady's career really started around like thirty and then really cranked up around thirty two to thirty three. So Mahomes hasn't even gotten there yet. And I if we listen back to this in ten years, I tend to think that this two year slight loll is only part of the bigger picture, and he's gonna have many more Manning Brady Mahomes like the Bonker seasons moving forward.

00:34:00
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, those guys didn't always have all pros at every position around them. But I just think the twenty three when his receivers had the worst drop rate of the last decade, and you know, I think about the drop against the Lions that cost him the game in Week one with Darius Tony, and then last year, I mean, they had a turnstile left tackle all season, something that I think the great teams have always had, you know, kind of a locked in left tackle, a guy who they can trust pretty much every year they're successful. And the Chiefs have kind of just cycled guys through and managed to win anyway, I wouldn't be shocked if over the next five or ten years. Five in the next five years, when they have a settled left tackle situation, when they have maybe a better set of receivers, we've seen more of the Ma Homes numbers we've seen in years past. I think, you know, we're also smarter, Like we also have the ability now in twenty twenty five to watch all twenty two and we didn't have that for really the vast majority of paidon Manning and Tom Brady's career. The discourse is smarter. We know, we have more access to data and information that we just didn't have in those guys career. And I think all of that really underlies and tells us how good and how consistent Patrick Mahomes is in ways that even the other great quarterbacks in this league are not.

00:35:10
Speaker 1: Right now, yeah, that that is totally fair, And I could see he's an interesting like psychology case because yes, Brady had all the team success quickly, but he really didn't become who he was as an individual player, I would say until at least five six and then whereas Manning, I mean, Mahomes has experienced it all, He's done every he's had a hall of fame career that you know, in his first four or five years. So the motivation of how to keep getting better, and I think he's going to get to want to get back to some of the fun Mahomes plays that we saw early.

00:35:47
Speaker 2: Let's just watch one of them, just for the hell of it. Four than nine. I chose it after him Maholmes.

00:35:54
Speaker 11: In Football Twins for the costs body.

00:36:01
Speaker 2: Let He's a.

00:36:02
Speaker 4: Ballance of the town.

00:36:04
Speaker 6: Been amazing play by the cheats all the way across the field.

00:36:08
Speaker 2: Well, your body weight is backwards falling out. That is just outrageous.

00:36:13
Speaker 1: That's a twenty eighteen game against the Ravens.

00:36:16
Speaker 3: And that's not like the only time he's done that or made that sort of throw. Greg. I think back to that Lions game they actually lost Week one of twenty twenty three, where it handed in like a third and twenty two in a fourth and twenty two situation, and more than anybody else in football, more than Tom Brady, more than paidon Manning, more than anybody else. If it's a fourth and twenty plus, the only person on the planet where I'm actually scared of them hitting it is Patrick Mahomes, and he got someone open. I think he got Cadarius Tony opening the ball on off his fingertips er might have been Sky Moore. I get my twenty twenty three bad Chiefs receivers confused in my head. But even the Bengals game last year where he had a third and forever and a fourth and forever, they hit Kelsey for a touchdown and got called back because is that the Cardarius Tony It was Nickarious side, but idea like in those third, fourth and firmer situations, it feels almost like a fifty to fifty shot and that's not the case for anyone else in football.

00:37:06
Speaker 1: Yes, so I don't really think he's having Brady's career backwards. I think he's going to have the individual success along with the team's success.

00:37:15
Speaker 2: Moving forward. But it is fun to have a guy.

00:37:20
Speaker 1: He's really the first guy that I've felt JJ Watt is probably the closest other one where like as it's happening, as it's starting, you're aware of just witnessing greatness and yees seventeen and four in the postseason, we saw that clip against the Ravens. He's personally like ruined a potential Bill's dynasty, beating them four times in the playoffs, which is just outrageous. This decade one great team alone, he's beaten four times. Everyone trying to get past Patrick Mahomes Like a lot of teams in the AFC. We're trying to get past our number one player. Let's just get to him number one.

00:37:57
Speaker 3: Tom bring.

00:38:00
Speaker 7: Brady shoot the episode. Brady's fuck, that's a quarterback.

00:38:12
Speaker 4: Boy.

00:38:12
Speaker 11: Would you thought you'd seen it all? O, my God, fires it to the right, down the right sideline and caught at the twenty.

00:38:20
Speaker 2: Fifteen ten five touchdown.

00:38:23
Speaker 11: Patriots Tom Brady to Randy Moss and they each have set NFL records on the go. I had touchdown for Tom Brady touchdown pass number fifty, an NFL record.

00:38:35
Speaker 5: You have to have a certain obsession about winning, an understanding that if there's no in between is winning the Super Bowl and then there's failure. I haven't seen many do it the way Tom though.

00:38:47
Speaker 2: God lock Dan now laser focus.

00:38:53
Speaker 4: Sideline, gotta throw a Mondola on the reception. One of the best of the game for Tom Brady, choss the white to ruin the Super Bowl. The greatest pump back in Super Bowl history.

00:39:12
Speaker 2: What by the greatest quarterback.

00:39:16
Speaker 1: I apologize to our listeners and especially Bill Barnwell for having to watch all of that. Bill, but you got to cackle while the Giants took Brady out a couple of times. Those obviously were the great moments of his career and didn't even include the Bucks spiking the football at the end of his career where he came in second in an MVP vote and won another Super Bowl. Ultimately, it just felt and I did debate between these three, was it Mahomes or Manning? And then I kind of I thought about Mahomes or Brady because I know all the accomplishments obviously go to Brady, But in terms of pure greatness, I thought hard about Mahomes and just what we've seen. But ultimately, if we're talking about the highs being just the absolute highest, and then the longevity and accomplishments is sort of the tie breaker. It's not like Tom Brady's highs weren't exceptionally high.

00:40:11
Speaker 2: And so in the end he is my number one. Are you are you happy with my top three order?

00:40:16
Speaker 3: I think so. The thing about Brady, and obviously, I mean, what's you know Tom Brady? Like, I don't think you needed to tell you Tom Brady is good. But what I would say really stands out to me is just how how ubiquitous Brady came in terms of what you saw off the field of what you saw on the field. I know, Patrick mahomes Are, you know, we were talking, I think in the video clip about some Jordan comparisons. To me, you know, Brady's the pretty clear Jordan, you know successor in terms of just the sheer volume of winning early in his career, just the standard being set, the expectation that he was always going to pull things out, that he was never out of a game. The Falcons game didn't happen until much later in his career. But you know, we saw comebacks, we saw great moments, we saw, you know, just poise that was preternatural early on in his career. And then I would say, even maybe more so, just the evolution of the on field product of the National Football League. Yes, the Colts through the ball a ton, Yes, the early Andy Reid Eagles through the ball a ton, But really that two thousand and seven Patriots team is what transformed the NFL. I mean, when you see the offenses Brady was running early in his career. Yes, it's technically still our hurt Perkins, it's still you know, maybe some of the underlying concepts, but really moving to the spread, incorporating some tempo stuff from the Chip Kelly College teams before Chip got to the NFL. I think seeing an evolution of teams leaning into the past, leaning into spreading the ball around, leaning into you know, that being a way to consistently win at the highest level, as opposed to kind of being you know, maybe more of a gimmick. We saw the Falcons from a run and shoot earlier on in the nineties, and that didn't stick very long. We didn't see teams adopt that. The Patriots were so good and Tom Brady was so good running that offense that it became kind of a core concept of what teams do. You could not put it aside and ignore it. And now the modern version in the NFL, well, there's stuff that wasn't in those offenses. But the modern NFL looks more like the two thousand and seven Patriots when offenses were at their best in a lot of ways than I think anybody could have anticipated heading into that two thousand and seven season.

00:42:32
Speaker 1: Hell like that, the twenty eleven teams too, with like the two tight ends and playing fast, and it's it's really interesting with Brady because, Okay, his accomplishments. He's first team All Decade in the two thousands for the Hall of Fame and Pro Football Reference, but he's also first team All Decade in the twenty tens for the Pro Football Fame, which is outrageous. And then, oh, by the way, in the twenty twenties, as I mentioned, he won the Super Bowl in his first year with the Bucks and then actually had a better year over his second year, almost won the MVP and had that big fourth quarter comeback that the Rams stopped to help win their Super Bowl. So he's got all the numbers and stuff, even if he doesn't have the amount of seasons of being an All Pro only three only along with his MVPs, and so that's less than Manning. But it's crazy to think. I think so many of his best seasons Bill are actually when they didn't win. I always thought that was weird as a Patriots fan, like he was great in two thousand and five. That was the first year actually I felt as a Patriots fan that not only is this guy great, but that, oh, he can and should be the best quarterback in the league. Even after three Super Bowls, you didn't quite feel like that he was coming on by the end of two thousand and four, but he was awesome in two thousand and five, and then I think the best Patriots offenses were ten and twenty eleven. Their defense is just stunk, and him dragging some of the other teams, like the twenty thirteen to twenty fifteen team, which also had their issues whether is running or defense to the doorstep. And he went that ten long years between Super Bowls, and you think about like he was playing his very best then, and yet then he still tacks on the twenty fourteen season, which I think is to me like the most complete Patriots team that they ever had, and then you have the comeback and then you have them kind of dotting the eye at the at the very end with the comeback against Mahomes. There's just so many different seasons like that twenty twenty two and with the Bucks, where it was like it wasn't all about team success, it was about him sort of setting the floor so freaking high that statistically you just.

00:44:36
Speaker 2: Were going to break through eventually.

00:44:39
Speaker 1: And that's why like they went ten years without it, but eventually they were gonna win some more of those close games because your boy, Eli Manning, you know, wasn't going to get back to the playoffs.

00:44:49
Speaker 3: Yeah, the Brady stopper. Yeah, really early in Brady's career, someone who lived in Boston at the time, who was, you know, part of whatever the football internet was early on. Early in those days, we were thriving.

00:45:00
Speaker 2: We were thriving. We were in the mid odds, we were there.

00:45:04
Speaker 3: Even the pre mid odds, even the early offs. Greg. I feel like, you know, Brady was talked about maybe in the same way Brock Purdy as now, like it was Okay, he's a game manager, he's going to be smart. But no, he's not just a he's not a transcending quarterback in turns visibility. No, he's not the guy who's going to terrify opposing defensive coordinators at night. And there was there was a throw, there was a touchdown pass in overtime against the Dolphins where that was the one. I think it was like an eighty plus yard touchdown to I want to say Troy Brown, Yes that that It was like, oh, he can he can do that. He has that in his locker, and you saw that over and over again, Brady going from being a guy who was just, oh, he's going to just, you know, come up with a late driver, to to oh, no, he's going to dominate you for four quarters, to oh, he's going to rack up crazy numbers, to oh, he's the focal point of this offense and everything is built through him and around him. That wasn't the case early on, and that really, you know, again showed his growth, his development, his ability to go from being the guy who didn't have eliant arms strength to be a guy who could make literally any throw and terrify opposing teams on the process. And I bring up Troy Brown, and Troy Brown was a good football player, but Greg, you know, he had a couple of truly transcendent players. He had Rob Gronkowski, who was maybe one of the best times the NFL history when he was on the field. He had Randy Moss that year. But just the sheer volume of guys who were not exactly superstars elsewhere. I mean, Wes Welker was not even a regular starter for one of the worst teams in NFL history, that Dolphins team, where he got traded to the Patriots and that turned things around. Guys like Chris Hogan, Josh Gordon, Brandon Lafel, those guys all have more than one thousand receiving yards on throws from Tom Brady. And you know Bill Belichick would have his misses at wide receiver throughout time. They signed some free agentsy didn't work out. They had some draft picks who didn't work out, but really more than Manning because Manning just had so many talented players and even Mahomes who's had Kelsey for his entire career. I mean, Brady made different versions of that offense work. Like you mentioned the twelve personnel grouping with Bronck and Aaron Hernandez that transformed the offense. They made the spread work. He made it work with David Gibbons and Troy Brown early in his career, and he was hitting Jermaine Wiggins for plays in the Super Bowl. You know, it really was such a really fascinating offense and changed so many ways. And the guy who ended up being most closely associated with him down the run was Julian Enleman, who was a seventh round pick. I mean, he made so many guys careers by being such a incredibly accurate and incredibly anticipatory passer.

00:47:43
Speaker 1: Yeah, the two thousand and six AFC Championship, which was ultimately the best moment I think of Peyton Manning's career because he led that comeback, was so close to being Brady's best job. I would say dragging a team that shouldn't be there for there because his top two receivers that year were Rashe Caldwell and Doug Gabriel. I think who was hurt by the time they got to the championship game, so it was Jabar Gaffney remember some guys.

00:48:12
Speaker 2: Yes, I love it, I absolutely do well.

00:48:15
Speaker 1: I think what made him great though, more than anything ultimately was his pocket movement, And I think that's just growing up a Patriots fan ultimately and watching Brady is why I lean towards that being like the number one trait that if if you have it, if you can naturally buy a little extra time with small movement inside the pocket while keeping your eyes downfield and like going through your reads like that is I believe the number one trait like a quarterback can have that inaccuracy, and to me, that is the number one thing. He was the best at of all time, Like I sort of started to take it for granted of just watching him versus other quarterbacks are just like, what a crazy feel he just sort of naturally had of where the pass rushers were to buy himself that extra half a second. I think I think he had that in a way that even Manning and Rogers and Mahomes didn't. I really think that was the thing that kind of made him Brady more than anything else.

00:49:14
Speaker 3: I think it's defense rating, and it's kind of crazy that you could have multiple things that Tom Brady might be the best of all time at at different elements of being a quarterback. You know, his ability to kind of read leverages of defensive players and take advantage of them. And again, I think with the home you talked about and taking the easy stuff, like Tom Brady was the best quarterback in NFL history at taking what defenses gave you and you know, being able to get the ball into the places where there are were week spots and defense is making that decision quickly, knowing what that was going to be based on, you know, the pre snap leverage and pre snap movement and being able to manipulate that with the line of scrimmage I think was really hard, and Patriots offense was not easy, especially as as time war on and they added more and more to it, and you're going take stuff out, but usually you're going to keep more in than you take out as you're expanding an offensive scheme and an offensive playbook over so many years with so many of the same people, and you know, there's a lot of option routes in there. There's a lot of stuff that you know made receivers lives hell. I think we saw it. Kembell Tompkins clip. I want to say something.

00:50:14
Speaker 1: Yeah, that was his game winner against the Saints. I thought that that was like just one of the best passes of his career. That was a fun game win. Yeah, Chadoh Chosinco could never pick it up. I'll always blame the twenty eleven championship on the Patriots not changing their strategy of just leaving Ocho Cinco on an island one side of the field getting totally locked up, not like thinking that he was going to win, But it was partly because, yeah, some guys couldn't couldn't pick it up, and he had such a high high bar of what you needed to speaking of which you mentioned Edelman as as the best wide receiver with with Brady, and I wouldn't disagree, But he did have one other guy who followed him to Tampa Brady play action.

00:50:56
Speaker 11: Look ski me up again with the touchdown.

00:51:04
Speaker 1: Yeah, that run with Tampa. Ultimately, we'll end with this. It just sort of spiked the football on all these conversations. It almost made it less fun because I think it's easier to forget now, like how freaking old he was when he got to Tampa. He also ruined the Belichick Brady debate. Really, not that it was a debate. I always thought that was stupid, Like football is about. It's a team sport, and it's the combination, right, it's the combination of them that made them great. But even me as a BELICHICKI in like, I always thought it was closer to fifty to fifty.

00:51:38
Speaker 2: Than I should have in terms of how important Belichick was.

00:51:41
Speaker 1: And then you just go back to the reality of I think any sport that of course it's more about the player, and you say about how the offense had transformed all over the years, It's like, yeah, that's Tom Brady ultimately being by far the most important part of it and for him to go at age forty three and put up those it was three seasons in a row as Bucks quarterback at like an extremely high level. Like I said a second in MVP, the second season after winning the Super Bowl the first It's just like it kind of ended all the arguments and it was just like it was just the ultimate Tom Brady seasons I actually think kind of were in Tampa.

00:52:19
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean that sort of warped our brains as well. Like I talked about the on field thing about you know, offenses looking more like two thousand and seven Patriots as time more on than they had beforehand. Our brains for what's normal for quarterbacks are broken by Tom Brady, right, Like, like Mahomes has been evaluated and compared every second of his career as a as a former first round pick and then as a successful quarterback to Tom Brady. Like that is the bar now in a way that it was not before Tom Brady. Even you know the fact that you have a guy playing into his forties with the Aaron Rodgers stuff in New York, like there was an expectation that, oh, Aaron Rodgers, wasn't he just found on the earth the Packers. But sure tom Brady can play into his forties or of bol So why can't Aaron Rodgers do it? Because that's not normal. Because he's the only identical history who's come close to doing that realistically. That is the I think there's this sort of expectation now that not only are you going to win very often in your prime, but you're going to keep winning later into your career, until your late thirties and even, like you said, into your forties. Because Tom Brady did it with a second team like that, that's warped our brains because that's not normal, that's not recedented, and it's not frankly realistic for anybody else. Tom Brady did that because he's the only player like Tom Brady in the history of the National Football League.

00:53:41
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it's funny how like the first part of his career was sort of defined and broken up by that ACL tear, and yet I sort of had forgotten until then that was like basically the only injury he ever had in his career.

00:53:53
Speaker 2: That, yeah, that kept him out of games.

00:53:55
Speaker 1: The only other thing was was Spygate, which I mean to flake Gate, which which he came back and got second in MVP that year despite having missed four games. And yeah, so it does break my brain a little bit to think that he was thirty nine when they made that comeback twenty eight to three against the Falcons. So we used to say it on around the NFL. You could divide his career into three parts. In all three would make the Hall of Fame. If you divide it into two. It is a neat trick that it's almost exactly Joe Montana's stats. I forget what year it is that you pick where it's like Joe Montana twice or three times if you want to have like a Kurt Warner type career.

00:54:35
Speaker 2: We've talked enough about Tom Brady on this podcast.

00:54:38
Speaker 1: Bill, I really appreciate you, and I appreciate you finishing out this series with me. We've been covering the league together this whole time, so you to me with perfect person to reflect on these guys, and I'm glad you agree with my top three.

00:54:53
Speaker 2: Thanks Buddy.

00:54:55
Speaker 3: Sounds like you're just saying I'm old, but now I appreciate it. No, I'm also I'm also playing at an unprecedented level in my early forties and hope to continue that for years too.

00:55:06
Speaker 1: I'm not going to say you were the youngest of all of our guest hosts, but there are certainly veterans who have been in the game longer than you have that contribute, and I wanted to thank them because this is our last episode, so forgive me, Bill, But I did want to thank Brian Baldinger. I mean he he was on Fox back in the nineties. Kevin Yeah, and and Kevin Harlan makes you know, Baldy look like a newcomer, so Kevin Harlan wanted to really thank him. Steve Weiss was covering the game before Bill Barnwell too, and then your great friend Mina Kimes joined us, and of course our friend Nate Tice, who was was the ball boy back for the Vikings back in the day. I also wanted to thank and because this has been a really fun series to do, and it was a lot of work and it took more cooperation UH than usual, and we're taping these shows along with our regular shows, so NFL Research really helped us out with this. UH Media serve, our creator, graphics and our creative team, booking, our social integration team. We don't get a chance to like thank these teams often our TOC and ingest and so everyone did a little extra work than we would normally have to do. We had Westwood One and the local radio call, so thank you to them for the rights to having to do that. And then more than anyone, our guys Gavin in the back, Chris Bobona, our producer, really took charge of this project and did it up right, and so thank you Chris, all under the stewardship of our main guy, Eric Roberts, so thank you very much. NFL Daily is part of the NFL Podcast Network. It is the home for all the official NFL media podcast produced in partnership with iHeartMedia. And Yes, this has been NFL Daily's Top twenty five players of the last twenty five years. I'm Greg Rosenthal and a little later this week, Yes Football will be back with some regular programming.

00:57:00
Speaker 3: See it