Top NFL Players of the 21st Century: Tom Brady, Ed Reed, and who else?

Hour 3 is underway with ESPN's rankings of the top NFL players since the year 2000. You can probably guess who No. 1 is, but can you guess the rest of the top-25? 

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
We begin the final hour of theprogram here and glad to have you with
us on this Wednesday afternoon, awarm, muggy day. It was raining
earlier here down here on the farwestern side of the Greater Austin area,
but doesn't look to be so now. So it could be a little muggy

(00:24):
out there, a little hot foryou out there, but we could get
some more rain coming up. Whowould you say, Cameron Parker is the
number one NFL player of the twentyfirst century since the year two thousand.

(00:46):
Who would you say is the numberone NFL player? I'm just talking,
not talking, I'm just saying sincethe year two thousand, Tom Brady.
Okay. ESPN did this and theyranked the top twenty five NFL players since
the year two thousand. Things mustbe slow, and what's that? Things

(01:07):
must be really slow. They alwaysdo that this time of year. Yeah,
they always do that this time ofyear. They ranked him number one,
which makes perfect sense to me becauseI you know, I think a
lot of people finally got on boardwith the fact that the consensus is he's
the greatest of all time, youknow, the goat as they like to

(01:27):
say, or whatever. It tooka while I had had some good arguments
with some folks about whether it wasHam or Joe Montana and all this other
kind of stuff. And when hewon his last Super Bowl went Tampa Bay,
I think a lot of folks finallydid at that point went ahead and
said, Okay, yea, becausehe's won definitely more super Bowls than Montana,

(01:48):
been to it more as as well. But in in this case,
for this the purposes of this surveythat was done by the NFL Nation Staff,
he was number one, but PatrickMahomes is number two, and of
course he's rising. Yeah, he'sstill I don't the gap between him and

(02:13):
Brady's got to be pretty big,Yeah, got to be pretty big.
But he can only improve his claimas he goes on with his career.
Mean, he's won two straight SuperBowls, he's got three rings, a
good chance to make it for Bradyobviously seven time champions, So Mahomes a
long ways to go to accomplish that. But if you say Mahomes can stay
healthy for the same amount of timethat Tom Brady did, he's a good

(02:38):
chance. He has a good chanceof matching what Tom did. Now,
it's gonna take some injury luck withthat as well. And also, you
know, who knows what, AndyReid, he may end up deciding to
retire a little bit sooner than Belichick. Yeah yeah, number three all times
Aaron Donald, And as a Ramsfan, obviously I greatly appreciated his accomplishments.

(03:00):
He was a ten time Pro bowlerand eight time First team All Pro,
a three time Defensive Player of theYear that's tied for most all time
Hall of Fame all twenty tens,the decade of the twenty tens team,
and the twenty fourteen Defensive Rookie ofthe Year. But you know, he
probably would not be rated that highhad he not accomplished that one final thing

(03:21):
getting a Super Bowl, which theRams did the twenty twenty one season as
well. So you know, thatprobably puts it over the top that sometimes
I think it's unfair when there isa you might say, a wall put
up between where a player's threshold onhow he has judged about how great he

(03:46):
is. If the teams he playedon never won the championship, be it
a World Series in baseball, anNBA title, or a Super Bowl,
and there's probably going to be someeyes that are going to fall into that
category until they win. Luka,Doncic will probably fall into that category and
probably will not get as much creditas he might deserve on down the road.

(04:10):
Obviously he gets a lot of creditright now for what he's doing,
but on down the road and beingjudged in the pantheon unless th until the
Mavericks win an NBA title with himin the backboard. I think that's only
a knock that can happen to quarterbacksin football because it is a team sport.
It's unfair that Aaron Donald as adefensive tackle, Yeah, you're pretty

(04:31):
incredible and it takes seven guys toblock you, but you don't have that
ring. What No, a quarterback, I understand that because you have the
ball in your hands every single play, But any other position, Craig,
I don't think it's fair to knockdown or maybe elevated players claim based on
how many rings they wont especially forAaron Donald, considering we have never seen

(04:54):
a football player like him, whathe's been able to do consistently throughout his
NFL career every single game, andhis impact defensively. And I think that
the best part about Aaron Donald ishow much money he's made his teammates and
what they have gone. I thinkalways think about Leonard Floyd where on the

(05:14):
opposite side. And there's another heplayed for the Cowboys at one point,
who was with the Rams before,but he was on the opposite side of
Aaron Donald, and he put upincredible numbers. And honestly, you look
back at it's because so many offenseswere devoting two or three guys to Aaron
Donald that it was leaving other playerswhich is an easier one on one match

(05:35):
of allowing him to get more tacklesor more sacks. Yeah, that's true
to your point. Number four onthe list of Peyton Manning. Peyton Manning's
won two Super Bowls with two differentteams. But, like you said,
quarterbacks are going to be judged alittle more sternly than say something like that.

(05:57):
Randy Moss number five, Robert Quinnis who I was thinking of.
Oh okay, all right? LinebackerRobert Quinn number six, Calvin Johnson wide
receiver number seven, JJ Watts numbereight, Ray Lewis, Aaron Rodgers number
nine, cam number nine. Howdo you feel about Aaron Rodgers top ten.

(06:18):
I think he's the most talented quarterbackof all time, and maybe him
and Mahomes one and two. Butin terms of actual talent, I don't
think there's not many quarterbacks like Rogers. And he's getting close to forty and
here we are entering the season,and if the Jets are going to make
a Super Bowl run, it's becauseof him, which tells you a lot
about his longevity. Rob Demowski,who does a podcast and writes for ESPN,

(06:43):
I like his work, wrote thecapsule on Rogers, and I think
this capsulizes summarizes Aaron Rodgers worth onthis His quote was of all the superlatives
and milestones that can be used toexplain rogers greatness, here's one that often
gets overlooked. He's the NFL's alltime leader in touchdown to interception ratio four

(07:10):
hundred and seventy five touchdowns to onehundred five interceptions. In that way,
he was the anti Brett farv Yep. Rodgers carried on far as remarkable run
success in Green Bay before getting tradedto the Jets, so he said.
Perhaps Green Bay's head coach Matt Lafleurdescribed his impact best when he said,
near the end of his time ofthe pack, a lot of people have
been rewarded, quite frankly, becausehis ability to go out there and play.

(07:34):
So that speaks to your and Donaldquote. A lot of people got
rewarded because of his ability to goout and play. Yeah, and you
know all the media stuff with AaronRodgers, his quotes, all that stuff.
You know, that's that's one separatething, kind of like Kyrie Irving.
But on the field, on thecourt, it's a lot of fun
watching Aaron Rodgers play and that interception, the touchdown ratio is absolutely insane,

(07:57):
and there was a lot of timesduring his backer's career where you just knew
he was going to make the rightplay every single time. It's it's incredible
and it's been a lot of funto watch, even though he is a
bit of a head case at times. Yeah, number ten on the list,
and it's a little high for mefor this guy. I respected his
work, but sometimes I thought itwas a little spiked up for the is

(08:18):
Darrell Reeves Rives Island. Yeah,all right, So he's in the Hall
of Fame, seven time Pro Bowler, four time First Team All Pro.
Ed Reed who's the next nine timePro bowler, five time First Team All
Pro alsomim the Hall of Fame.You know, I would just I would
go there probably beforehand I would.I would definitely have flopped him rather.

(08:43):
Yeah. I love Reeves, butI think what Ed Reid has. I
always think about that story with himand Peyton Manning where for an entire season
Ed Reid he had studied Peyton Manningin and out and got to a point
where he knew through a check orthrough a certain audible of what Peton Manning

(09:03):
was going to do. And hewaited the entire season until I think it
was the playoffs and saw that usedit and was able to pick off Peyton
Manning. Shows you the study inthe time that Edwyd put into the game,
because we all know about his physicalability to absolutely take out somebody over
the middle, but also the mentalside of it. Yep. Charles Woodson
number twelve, Rob Grinkowski number thirteen, Travis Kelcey still playing there at number

(09:28):
fourteen on the Rise, Drew Breesfifteen, Troy Polamalu sixteen, Brett fav
ranked seventeenth, Adrian Peterson eighteen,Michael Strahan nineteen, Ladanian, Tomlinson number
twenty, Marshall Falk twenty one.More in SAP twenty two, Joe Thomas,

(09:48):
a long time offensive tackle the ClevelandRowse twenty three, Tony Gonzales number
twenty four, and Derek Brooks twentyfive. And then I like how they
he kind of do like with theNCAA Tournament projections. First five out Jonathan
Ogden, the offensive tackle from theRavens, Larry Fitzgerald, the wide receiver
of the Cardinals, Orlando Pace,the great offensive tackle of the Rams,
Marvin Harrison, Peyton Manning's favorite targetwith the Colts, and Tera Owens of

(10:13):
course in his long list of accomplishments. So there was that. I thought
it was an interesting read. They'rethe top twenty five players since the year
two thousand, so you can narrowit down just over the past twenty three
years, twenty four seasons counting thetwo thousand season, and say, here's
a top twenty five that's from theircombined vote that came up with that.

(10:37):
Their top twenty five off of that, Tony Romo must be thirty one,
must be just outside just outside ofthat. All right, coming up,
like I said, we want todo, we have another one of these
to play a talkback feature like wesaid, we're giving away these Dave Campbell's
Texas Football magazines through our talk backfeature. So here's an example of somebody

(11:01):
who did what we're asking you do. If you want to win to copy
this, all you have to dois download the iHeartRadio app. If you
haven't already a lot of people alreadyhave it. It's just open up the
app. Go to AM thirteen underthe zone on there. On the app,
there's a little red button with awhite microphone like push it. Can
you leave us a fifteen twenty twentyfive second message on what you look forward
to the most in reading in theannual four hundred page edition of Dave Campbell's

(11:26):
Texas Football Magazine. Here was somebodyelse who did that. Hello, this
is john One. What I likebest about the Dave Campbell's is the cover
boys stories given a little in depthcoverage to certain players for each classification,

(11:52):
and also the SuperTeams of course,and anyway, thank you. Yeah,
And he's talking about the cover boysfor each classification in the high school section.
I was just reading one last nightthat Ishmael Johnson wrote about Armando Luhan,
who has done a tremendous quarterback atSunray high up in the Panhandle,

(12:16):
and he's done a great job upthere. So that's that's what he's talking
about. And that's all it takes. It's as simple as that, and
you'll get a copy of the magazinefor that. He might have been doing
that one from work something like thatover he was. It came in I
think pretty early this morning, sohe he might have been getting a little
cup of coffee, someone stopped offsomeplace, you I was grabbing a cup

(12:39):
of coffee or something, okay,and some breakfast or something. All right,
But you can leave us that messageon that, and again we've given
away ten more today. We're givingaway copies this week and next week of
the magazine. All Right, We'vegot some other baseball notes to get to
when we come back here on sportsRadio AM thirteen under the zone of the
iHeartRadio app.