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

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26:04Bill Barnwell:Back on NFL Daily's Best 25 Players of the last 25 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. Number two, Patrick Mahomes. Go out there and take that! Every single snap! Everything you've got for the guy beside you, and we're going to find a way to get a win! First and goal. Mahomes flings at you. It's there! Hartman! Jackpot! Kansas City! and the game-winning drive of Mahomes' career. He's been waiting for his what-series, but he's never had it in an overtime. He is the best.

26:50He is the standard. Your Michael Jordan wins it again. Winning football games makes you a villain. We're going to keep going out there and doing it. Chiefs need some Mahomes magic.

27:05Launches down the middle. Hill. Open. Caught. And they get it. Kansas City, the big play. What Tom has done is historic, but if there was a player who could do it, it would be Patrick. I've been blessed to be on a lot of great football teams, a lot of great coaches, and a great organization. And I just try to maximize every moment because you never know when's going to 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.

27:32Bill Barnwell:Patrick Mahomes coming in at number two, and that clip, Bill, has a moment in Patrick Mahomes' his first Super Bowl where it's third and 15. They're down 20 to 10. 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 Rodgers and Brees, 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 15 and he makes a throw just few others in NFL history could make. Greg, I remember that game very well because I picked the Niners to win that game.

28:11And I felt 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 for the vast majority of that game. And then lights out. I think he hit Sammy Watkins for a touchdown pass later on in that game. And 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.

28:52And I would certainly say that's fair. I think that throw, I remember Peter King found the name, was it Wasp, the name of that play? Yes, yes. you know that third and 15 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 game in some ways I thought that was a little bit of a stretch

29:23Bill Barnwell:because he was like he finally did it in overtime he finally got the game-winning drive and I guess that's true but i think of the drive against the eagles you got to get points to win the super bowl and he is not a 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 need it while we're talking about it let's look at another one of those earlier in that run second and nine kansas city in the red zone at the texan 15 yard left mahomes on the far hash in the pocket stepping up and trying to Squeezed through his face on his feet.

29:5810, 5. Mahomes is into the end zone. Touchdown, Kansas City on that bad ankle. Stepping through the pocket. Running all the way to the sweet necker of the end zone.

30:10Bill Barnwell:It's just so reminiscent of so many moments. Whenever 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 his journey. but yeah even in his first season he always ran just fast enough to 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 in the total alchemy of like what has made him so great yeah i 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 who are more athletic and who can run for first downs and do so and there's nothing wrong with doing that but i just think beholmes's ability to sort of figure out okay i have exactly enough space to get 10 yards per ring 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 Mitch Trubisky of the Chicago Bears, and then Deshaun Watson, who was drafted by the Texans.

31:27But this was a player who, it's not like the Peyton Manning situation, where yes, Bill Walsh famously debated whether Ryan Leaf was better than Peyton 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 grade 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 was not that sort of overwhelming, oh my God, this is a generational quarterback prospect.

32:05And 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 sat on the bench before playing the final week of the year. He really evolved as a quarterback. And the guy who showed up that first season in 2018, where he really played from week one onward, looked different in a lot of ways from the guy we saw at Texas Tech.

32:32Bill Barnwell:I'm glad you brought that up. And that first start, I wrote an entire huge off-season column about it because if listeners remember, Alex, yeah, it was against the Broncos. It was week 17. 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 caller start prepping for the playoffs while Andy Reid and the quarterbacks coach at the time, Mike Kafka, who 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.

33:12And they played their starters now. Denver did. Yeah. They're 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 that he does in practice. So we kind of go, ah, it's practice. He starts doing those in the game. I'm going, whoa, okay, that's something special.

33:34Bill Barnwell:He had a throw to Demarcus Robinson in that game that was just absolutely crazy. His first completion as a pro was a 35-yard frozen rope. I think it was to the opposite hash. And I love that quote from Reed, who just said, we started feeling like 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 that is unique about Mahomes compared to Manning or Brady or really anyone, and it's why he's number two.

34:16Bill Barnwell:And we can go in the comparison between him and Manning because he obviously doesn't have the same amount of first-team All-Pros or MVPs. But what he did, Bill, was be the best quarterback in the league from the minute he actually started playing. His first three starts, he had 13 touchdowns, no interception, and was averaging like over 300 yards. Like that first playoff run, he has those crazy comebacks where they, you know, he had 24 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.

34:52Bill Barnwell:So he was epic even in that playoff run. And that's what's unique, I think, about him compared to a Peyton Manning who took till year six to win that playoff game compared to Tom Brady, who took till about year 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. 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.

35:25They ran 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, a 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. back because I think, yes, Peyton Manning did evolve in some ways as he moved on, but he was really, I think, so good and so consistent in running the offense that was very consistent over the course of his time in Indianapolis.

36:02Tom Brady did evolve. We'll talk about that in a little bit. But over the course of five or six years, really, Patrick Mahomes has gone from being the guy who torments teams deep to having to be a guy who throws underneath the vast majority of the time. He's 35th in air yards per attempt over the last three years. Only Daniel Jones has fewer air yards per throw. And he's thrived doing that because 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.

36:33But whether it's losing Tyree Kill, whether it's the, you know, defenses being absolutely terrified of him burning them deep of not having maybe the best offensive line or the best tackles, giving him the time to make those throws and spots, they've been incredibly consistent at picking up third downs 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 and 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.

37:10Patrick Mahomes 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.

37:23Bill Barnwell:Right. 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 his decision-making. He's just become such an elite decision-maker as a young player. And I don't think that gets talked about first. 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. My initial instinct was two. And then you look at the numbers and five MVPs for Manning's and this exercise bill was supposed to be about greatness, who I actually just think was the best player. It wasn't about counting stats totally.

37:55Bill Barnwell: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 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 as a starter, three years, four years, five years, I was like, that's the best three years to start his career.

38:29Bill Barnwell:Best four years. 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 16-game regular season in the last two regular seasons. Now, the playoffs are a different story. Obviously, he struggled in the Super Bowl last year, but unlike Manning and Brady and almost anyone else to play the game in history, his numbers have gone up significantly in the playoffs, as good as they are in the regular season. His rate stats are even crazier, and they're great in the regular season too.

39:04Bill Barnwell:We might as well go over them 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 net yards per attempt in NFL history and number two in adjusted yards per attempt in 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 weird because Manning and Brady, their best parts of their career actually started right about now for Mahomes.

39:45Bill Barnwell:Like the best part of Manning's career really started around 27, 28. I would say the best part of Brady's career really started around like 30 and then really cranked up around 32, 33. So Mahomes hasn't even gotten there yet. And I, if we listen back to this in 10 years, I tend to think that this two year, like slight lull is only part of the bigger picture. And he's going to have many more Manning, Brady, Mahomes, like this bonker seasons moving forward. Yeah. I mean, those guys didn't always have all pros at every position around them, but I just think the 23 when his receivers had the worst drop rate of the last decade.

40:24And we're, you know, I think about the drop against the Lions that cost them 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 10 years, in fact, 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 Mahomes members we've seen in years past.

40:56I think, you know, we're also smarter. Like, we also have the ability now in 2025 to watch all 22. And we didn't have that for really the vast majority of Peyton Manning and Tom Brady's career. The discourse is smarter. We have more access to data and information that we just didn't have early 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 right now.

41:25Bill Barnwell:Yeah, that is totally fair. And I could see he's an interesting 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 05, 06. Whereas Mahomes has experienced it all. He's had a Hall of Fame career in his first four or five years. So the motivation of how to keep getting better, and I think he's going to want to get back to some of the fun Mahomes plays that we saw early. Let's just watch one of them just for the hell of it. Fourth and nine. Chasing after him. Mahomes in trouble. Flings it across his body.

42:11And it's caught by him. Here he has it. He came back for it. And he's out of bounds of control. an amazing play by the Chiefs all the way across the field while your body weight is backwards

42:25Bill Barnwell:falling out that is just outrageous that's a 2018 game again against the Ravens 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 2023 where it ended in like a third and 22 and a fourth and 22 situation and more than anybody else in football, more than Tom Brady, more than Peyton Manning, more than anybody else, if it's a fourth and 20 plus, the only person on the planet where I'm actually scared of them hitting it is Patrick Wilhelms. And he got someone open. I think he got Kadarius Toney opening the ball and off his fingertips, or might've been Sky Moore.

42:59I get my 2023 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 it got called back because, was that the Kadarius Toney? No, it wasn't the Kadarius Toney outside. But you get the idea. Like in those third, fourth and forever situations, it feels almost like a 50, 50 shot. And that's not the case for anyone else in football.

43:21Bill Barnwell: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 moving forward. But it is, it is fun to have a guy. He's really the first guy that I've, I've felt JJ Watt is, is probably the closest other one where like, as it's happening, as it's starting, you're aware of just witnessing greatness. And yeah, 17-4 in the postseason. We saw that clip against the Ravens. He's personally ruined a potential Bills dynasty, beating them four times in the playoffs, which is just outrageous this decade. One great team alone, he's beaten four times.

44:02Bill Barnwell: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, Tom Brady. Brady to the end zone. Tom Gets with a touchdown. Brady's back. That's your quarterback. Boy, would you thought you'd seen it all. My God. Fires it to the right, down the right sideline, and caught at the 2015-10-5 touchdown Patriots. Tom Brady to Randy Moss and they each have set NFL records on the go-ahead touchdown for Tom Brady. Touchdown pass number 50, an NFL record. You have to have a certain obsession about winning and understanding that there's no in-between.

44:57There's winning a Super Bowl and then there's failure. I haven't seen many do it the way Tom does. Got locked in now, laser focused.

45:07Sideline. What a throw. Amendola on the reception. One of the best of the game for Tom Brady. Toss to White. He's in. Patriots win the Super Bowl. The greatest comeback in Super Bowl history. Led by the greatest quarterback.

45:30Bill Barnwell: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 Bucs 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 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.

46:12Bill Barnwell:But ultimately, if we're talking about the highs being just the absolute highest and then the longevity and accomplishments is sort of the tiebreaker, it's not like Tom Brady's highs weren't exceptionally high. And so in the end, he is my number one. Are you happy with my top three order? I think so. The thing about Brady, and obviously, I mean, what's, you know, Tom Brady? Like, I don't think you need me to tell you Tom Brady is good. But what I would say really stands out to me is just how ubiquitous Brady came in terms of what you saw off the field and what you saw on the field. I know Patrick Mahomes, or, you know, we were talking, I think, in the video clip about some Jordan comparisons.

46:54To me, Brady's the pretty clear Jordan 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 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 threw the ball a ton. Yes, the early Andy Reid Eagles threw the ball a ton.

47:37But really, that 2007 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 Erhard 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 pass, 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.

48:13We saw the Falcons run the run and shoot earlier on in the 90s, 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 of the NFL, there's stuff that wasn't in those offenses, but the modern NFL looks more like the 2007 Patriots when offenses were at their best in a lot of ways than I think anybody could have anticipated heading into that 2007 season.

48:46Bill Barnwell:And hell, like the 2010, 2011 teams too, with like the two tight ends and playing fast. And it's really interesting with Brady because, okay, his accomplishments, his first team all decade in the 2000s for the Hall of Fame and Pro Football reference. But he's also first team all decade in the 2010s for the Pro Football Hall of Fame, which is outrageous. And then, oh, by the way, in the 2020s, as I mentioned, he won the Super Bowl in his first year with the Bucs and then actually had a better year overall, his second year, and almost won the MVP and had that big fourth quarter comeback that the Rams stopped to help win their Super Bowl.

49:24Bill Barnwell:So he's got all the numbers and stuff, even if he doesn't have the amount of seasons 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 2005. 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 2004, but he was awesome in 2005.

50:02Bill Barnwell:And then I think the best Patriots offenses were 2010 and 2011. Their defenses just stunk. And him dragging some of the other teams like the 2013-2015 team, which also had their issues, whether it was running or defense to the doorstep. And he went that 10 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 2014 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 very end with the comeback against Mahomes.

50:38Bill Barnwell:There's just so many different seasons like that 2022 and with the Bucs 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 were going to break through eventually. And that's why like they went 10 years without it. But eventually they were going to win some more of those close games because your boy Eli Manning, you know, wasn't going to get back to the playoffs. 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.

51:13We were thriving, Bill. Oh, we were thriving. We were. In the early aughts. We were there. Even the pre-mid aughts, even the early aughts, Greg. I feel like, you know, Brady was talked about maybe in the same way Brock Brady is 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 terms of his ability. No, he's not the guy who's going to terrify opposing defensive coordinators at night. And 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 80 plus yard touchdown to i want to say troy brown yes um that that it was like oh he 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 gonna just you know come up with a late drive or two to oh no he's gonna 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.

52:13And that really, you know, again, showed his growth, his development, his ability to go from being a guy who didn't have elite arm strength to be a guy who could make literally any throw and terrify opposing teams in 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 tightens in 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.

52:55Guys like Chris Hogan, Josh Gordon, Brandon LaFell, those guys all have more than 1 ,000 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 agents who didn't work out. They had some draft picks who didn't work out. But Brady, really more than Manning, because Manning just had so many talented players, and even Mahomes just had Kelsey for his entire career. I mean, Brady made different versions of that offense work. Like you mentioned the 12 personnel grouping with Bronco and Aaron Hernandez that transformed the offense.

53:29They made the spread work. He made it worked with David Givens and Troy Brown early in his career when he was hitting Jermaine Wiggins for plays in the Super Bowl um you know it it really was such a a really fascinating offense and changes so many ways and and the guy who ended up being most closely associated with him down the run was Julian Edelman who was a seventh round pick I mean he made so many guys careers by being such a incredibly accurate and incredibly anticipatory passer yeah they the 2006 AFC

54:00Bill Barnwell: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 further because his top two receivers that year were Rache Caldwell and Doug Gabriel, I think who was hurt by the time they got to the championship game. So it was Jabbar Gaffney. Really becoming a remember some guy. Yes. I love it. I absolutely do. 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 the number one trait that 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 going through your reads, that is, I believe, the number one trait a quarterback can have that inaccuracy.

54:58Bill Barnwell:And to me, that is the number one thing he was the best at of all time. I sort of started to take it for granted of just watching him versus other quarterbacks. 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 he had that in a way that even Manning and Rodgers and Mahomes didn't. I really think that was the thing that kind of made him Brady more than anything else. I think it's defense reading and it's kind of crazy. You could have multiple things that Tom Brady might be the best of all time at, at different elements of being a quarterback.

55:36You 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 him 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 were weak spots in defenses, making that decision quickly, knowing what that was going to be based on you know the pre-snap leverage and pre-snap movement and um being able to manipulate that at the line of scrimmage i think was really hard and that patriots offense was not easy i especially as war as time wore on and they added more and more to it and you're gonna take stuff out but usually you're gonna 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 made receivers' lives hell.

56:25I think we saw a Kimbrel Tompkins clip, I want to say, at some point. Yeah, that was his game winner

56:29Bill Barnwell:against the Saints. I thought that was just one of the best passes of his career. Yeah. That was a fun game winner. Yeah. Chad Ochocinco could never pick it up. I'll always blame the 2011 championship on the Patriots not changing their strategy of just leaving Ochocinco on an island, one side of the field, getting totally locked up, thinking that he was going to win. But it was partly because, yeah, Some guys couldn't pick it up, and he had such a high bar of what you needed to do. Speaking of which, you mentioned Edelman as the best wide receiver with Brady, and I wouldn't disagree. But he did have one other guy who followed him to Tampa.

57:08Bill Barnwell:Brady, play action. Looking. Third option. End zone. Touch. Gronkowski again with the touchdown. Yeah, that run with Tampa ultimately will 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 how freaking old he was when he got to Tampa. Yes. He also ruined the Belichick-Brady debate. Really? Not that it was a debate. I always thought that was stupid. Football is about... It's a team sport and it's the combination... It's not the biggest content, Greg. Right. It's the combination of them that made them great.

57:45Bill Barnwell:But even me as a Belichickian, like I always thought it was closer to 50-50 than I should have in terms of how important Belichick was. 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 43 and put up those three seasons in a row as Bucs quarterback at like an extremely high level, like I said, a second and MVP the second season after winning the Super Bowl the first is just like it kind of ended all the arguments.

58:27Bill Barnwell:And it was just like it was just the ultimate Tom Brady seasons. I actually think kind of were in Tampa. Yeah, I mean, that that's sort of warped our brains as well. Like I talked about the on-field thing about, you know, offenses looking more like the 2007 Patriots as time wore on than they had beforehand. Our brains for what's normal for quarterbacks are broken by Tom Brady, right? Like Mahomes has been evaluated and compared every second of his career as a former first-round pick and then as a successful quarterback to Tom Brady. That is the bar now in a way that it was not before Tom Brady.

59:04even you know the fact that you have a guy playing into his 40s with the Aaron Rodgers stuff in New York like there was an expectation that oh Aaron Rodgers wasn't great as finally the Packers but sure Tom Brady can play into his 40s and right Super Bowl so why can't Aaron Rodgers do it uh because that's not normal because he's the only guy in NFL 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, into your late 30s, and even, like you said, into your 40s because Tom Brady did it with a second team.

59:43That's warped our brains because that's not normal. That's not precedented, 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.

59:57Bill Barnwell:It's funny how 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 that kept him out of games. The only other thing was Spygate, which I mean, Deflategate, 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 39 when they made that comeback 28 to three against the Falcons. So we used to say it on around the NFL, you could divide his career into three parts and all three would make the hall of fame.

1:00:35Bill Barnwell:If you divide it into two, it is a neat trick that it's almost exactly Joe Montana stats. If 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, we've talked enough about Tom Brady on this podcast. 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're, to me, a perfect person to reflect on these guys, and I'm glad you agree with my top three. Thanks, buddy. Sounds like you're just saying I'm old, but I'll say it.

1:01:12I appreciate it. No. I'm also playing at an unprecedented level in my early 40s and hope to continue that for years to come.

1:01:21Bill Barnwell: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 90s. Kevin, Kevin, Max and Pequin. Yeah. 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.

1:01:59Bill Barnwell:I also wanted to thank him because this has been a really fun series to do. And it was a lot of work and it took more cooperation than usual. And we're taping these shows along with our regular shows. So NFL research really helped us out with this. Media services, our graphics and our creative team, booking, our social integration team. We don't get a chance to 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 Babona, our producer, really took charge of this project and did it up right.

1:02:43Bill Barnwell: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 podcasts produced in partnership with iHeart Media. And yes, this has been NFL Daily's top 25 players of the last 25 years. I'm Greg Rosenthal. And a little later this week, yes, football will be back with some regular programming. See you then.

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