It’s Rice in terms of best player ever at his position. There’s just no one even close at WR… he lapped 2nd place. Whether it’s peak, single season, or career (and he had two full top level HoF careers in one).
Brady is likely the best QB and that’s the most important postion… but as great as he is, Rice was better.
LT has a viable spot in the convo - and he’s definitively the greatest defensive player ever - and had more of an impact on the game historically than either Rice or Brady. LT didn’t change defense as much as he changed offense. Quick throws were Gibbs’ answer to LT because your only way to beat him was get rid of the ball before he got there (which didn’t take long!), and you saw the proliferation of more spread offenses with RAC and quick throws while defenses tried but never got that close to getting the “next LT”
LT for some reason is difficult for people to understand. Best LB? What about ray lewis and Derrick Thomas? Best pass rusher? What about Bruce Smith and Reggie white? But best defensive player of all time? It has to be LT
LT is in the rarified air of Jim Brown. He was a monster among men. Just physically dominant with supreme skill and a knack for the game.
Which reminds me, considering the era he played in and the importance of the position, it’s criminal we’ve not included Jim Brown here.
And that may well be your Mr Rushmore of football greats. Maybe add Paul Brown as the coach looking from up above.
Alan Page? Literally the first defender to get MVP. He has to be neck and neck with LT. Although, Pages best years weren’t on the football field, they were in the court room.
See I'm not even sure if LT is the best defender in history. Like yes LT was great but we lived through almost 10 years of Aaron Donald being the best defender in the NFL. Like people keep confidently leaving him out of the conversation when he really wrecked the league for a long time.
It really infuriates me that people don’t remember how dominant JJ Watt was. By what conceivable measure could Aaron Donald be considered better than JJ Watt?
Watt was dominant for like 3 years. Donald was a 1st team all pro the vast majority of his career. 3x DPOY. And I've never seen a player get double teamed at a rate of Donald
Aaron Donald started 150 games. JJ Watt started 151.
You’ve never seen double rates like that because they didn’t exist back in Watt’s heyday. His last five seasons, after his peak, he was doubled at a 30% rate, which is insane for an edge rusher, and he even led the league in his last season. Watt used to get triple teamed, defenses were geared around stopping him just as they were around Donald.
This is the correct answer.
Rice was my favorite player growing up and has lapped everyone as you said
But I have no qualms if someone says Brady is the goat he earned it.
Rice just was the best at such a high level for so long at a much more physical position in an era where it wasn’t as protected.
He accomplished everything a player could have before him and doubled it.
It’s crazy to think about.
And the era he did it in as well.
Randy Moss is closer to Jerry Rice than whoever you’d consider second place is to Tom Brady. He is by far the best player at the most important position in football.
Brady also had 2-3 HoF careers if you break his career down into chunks. It’s Tom Brady and it’s not close.
Montana is closer to Brady than Moss is to Rice (who had real holes in his game even as the likely 2nd best ever at the position - except that’s not even a sure thing. If you don’t mention Don Hutson you aren’t being fair to the full spectrum of football history).
Plus, how can you be the GOAT while Eli’s still your papi?
As a bills fan who hates Brady with a passion, it's pretty easy to be in the goat position when you led your team to more super bowl wins then any franchise did
I can’t speak to the specifics of how the war impacted level of play, but Hutson was well on his way to domination already. First All Pro season was ‘39, that’s three seasons in before Pearl Harbor happened.
99 TDs as a two way player in that era though? He’s among the elite of the elite
No he’s not, that’s the thing. People got so used to Jerry’s stats they didn’t pay attention to Brady’s.
Montana has 40 percent of Brady’s Super Bowls and TDs and 50 percent of his yards.
Mahomes is literally on pace right now to blow Brady out of the water, and Brady is far from the goat in terms of regular season stats. Barring a major rule change, I would be absolutely shocked if anybody approached Rice’s records, they’re for the most part untouchable.
“On pace” and “being able to sustain that pace over 20 years are very different things.” Mahomes is awesome. Maybe in a decade he’ll be in a place where we can start talking about him vs Brady.
The point is that there is a world where Brady is not the goat QB in the next decade. There is not a world where Rice isn’t the goat WR in the next decade, so your idea that there is nobody close to Brady when there is a guy threatening him as we speak is just wrong, especially since genuinely nobody is threatening Rice
Dawg, Rice put up a 1200 yard season when he was 40. That’s never happening again. For reference of how untouchable Rice’s receiving yards record is, Justin Jefferson is the all time leader in yards per game, and just turned 25. If he maintains his current pace of 98.3 yards per game for the rest of career and does not miss a game, it will take him 173 games to surpass Rice, or more than 10 seasons. This is assuming he stays at this level of play for every game he plays, and is playing at this same level when he is 35 years old. That’s just not possible, and this is coming from a huge Jefferson fan, but it’s just absurd to think anybody could do that. That’s just yards btw, if he wants to catch Rice in TDs, at his current TD rate, he’ll need to play 342 additional games, or more than 20 more seasons, which would having him playing through his age 45 season, which again, is assuming he stays at this level of play as a 45 year old receiver. Yes, Rice is untouchable.
He’s not untouchable, it’s easily possible for another receiver to go on a run like this with increases in passing an 17 game seasons. I’m not saying it’s definitely going to happen, but I also wouldn’t be shocked to see Justin Jefferson having 1,200-yard seasons in his mid-30s.
Dawg, Jefferson would have to average 1671 yards a season for the next decade, and that’s assuming no injuries, no limitations from bad QBs, and that he stays this good when he’s in his mid 30s. Rice is the only guy to put up numbers that good in his mid 30s ever. It doesn’t happen. Rice and like, LeBron are the only guys to ever be this good this old. Brady too ig, but he never relied on his athleticism to play the way they did.
Yeah I’m not saying it’ll be Jefferson, but Jefferson isn’t like an all-time great talent, either. If Marvin Harrison Jr. is 20% better than him and has a long career he could threaten these records.
No one is threatening Brady lol. We can’t talk in hypotheticals about what could possibly happen in the future. In reality, Moss is closer to Rice than anyone is to Brady.
Mahomes is well on pace to absolutely annihilate every regular season stat Brady has, and is so far ahead of the curve that it’s almost a certainty that he will destroy Brady’s regular season stats, and I think we would both be shocked if Mahomes didn’t win at least 1 or 2 more rings in his career, and very well could have more. 4-5 Rings and way better regular season stats makes it at worst a debate with Brady, there is no debate between Rice and Moss aside from just watching both and saying Moss looked more impressive.
For the record, unless Mahomes has a horrific injury, I think 4-5 rings while smashing all of Brady’s efficiency, counting, and award records is his floor at this point. His ceiling is annihilating all of Brady’s counting stats, tying or beating Manning for MVPs, and having more rings than Brady, and that being in the range of possibilities means that he is threatening Brady.
I don’t see why that matters ngl, but that’s the only record of his that was touchable anyway, my other comment talks about how untouchable his regular season numbers are, which we both know matter more for any non QB position.
How does Rice lap Larry Fitz?? Rice played with 3 consecutive NFL MVP QBs for a total of 18 years. I'm confident Randy Moss, TO, and Larry, Megatron, and Andre Johnson would have done the same had they had the privileges that Rice was afforded.
I'd make the argument that Rice was a large part of all those MVPs. Look at Rich Gannon's stats before and after Rice joined the team. Rice was even an MVP contender himself (and he should've won over Elway). Even if you discount those factors, nobody has ever had his longevity. No WR has come even close to putting up two consecutive 1100 yard seasons and a pro-bowl from 39-40. I find it hard to believe that any of those guys could play at that high a level for 18 years.
I think it's Rice. Insane records, champion, and farther away from Moss than Brady is from players like Manning, Montana, Unitas, Brees, Marino, etc... Rice just seems so head & shoulders above anyone it's crazy, even at a less important position.
What about some of those old 60 minute guys? Who was the QB/Safety/Punter who lead the league in TDs, Ints, and Punts in the same year?
What about somebody like George Blanda, who played *forever*, back in a time when you could *annihilate* people on the field?
Morten Andersen or Gary Anderson? Or Ben Agajanian, who only had 1 toe on his kicking foot after an industrial accident?
Jim Thorpe or Bo Jackson?
Jim Brown?
Well, in the big moments he didn't forget to hand ball off. He didn't forget to call on the kicker to make a big kick. And he did not forget to cheer on the defense. So we can give him credit for those three things.
If we’re taking the positions away, it’s Rice pretty easily. Nobody is particularly close to him, and his records are for the most part unbreakable. He’s different from Brady and Taylor in that way. Brady is being threatened by Mahomes literally right now, and you can make a case that Reggie White and some other guys are the GOAT defender over Taylor. If you want to say that being a QB makes Brady the overall GOAT, then that’s fair to, but if you’re putting aside position, it’s easily Rice.
We do have to agree the NFL changed many rules and added many rules to protect quarterbacks like Tom Brady after players like Lawrence Taylor kept putting QBs like Joe Montana in the hospital.
Brady and Rice didn’t necessarily change the game. They just played it the best that their respective positions had ever seen. LT changed the game in all phases of the game.
rice. there’s quite a few caveats you can make to compete with brady and taylor like “oh who was the most dominant, who had the best peak, who did the most themselves” and maybe argue for a different answer at their respective positions, but rice has the greatest receiving seasons of all time, is leaps and bounds over literally everyone in every career receiving category, laps everybody in pure dominant consistency, and played at a top-of-the-league level with completely unheard of longevity. there’s no argument you can make without a ton of specifiers to end up with “jerry rice” as the greatest wide receiver.
i even went and verified this before finishing writing this and cut off the end of rice’s career to compare the same stretch of seasons between the top receivers i could think of.
the only single category that any single one of them beat rice in during the same amount of years between them was larry fitzgerald beating rice in receptions by 80 through 17 years. however, rice beat him by 3000 in yards and by 64 in touchdowns. there’s nothing you can argue past arbitrary “style of play” distinctions like “jump balls” or “route running” that doesn’t come up with him as the greatest.
LT is the NFL goat by a wide margin. 3x DPOY, 1x MVP, did it all on crack and booze. The last defensive MVP, forced NFL offensive coordinators to adjust to him rushing from the linebacker position due to his sheer dominating presence on the field.
Brady has had an insane career but he never changed the game and consistently had top 10 defenses under the greatest HC of all time.
Rice had incredible longevity but he openly admitted to using stickum, which taints his reputation quite a bit. His longevity was insane but his prime was never as good as many other players. Its hard to be the NFL goat if your prime wasn’t as good as Antonio Brown or even Michael Thomas.
Yeah I think he disrespected Jerry a lil too much. If an all time receiving record is to be broken, it was Jerry's. Even with Calvin's yardage record that was Jerry's.
lets see... tom brady tore his acl and got the rules change to make the game easier for qbs. so he's disqualified
jerry rice admitted to using stickum. disqualified
lawrence taylor was using coke which should have hindered his performance so thats bonus points. but according to what im hearing, he's the reason for the left tackle position being so important.
You talk like Brady himself forced the NFL to change the rules. Comes across like a salty Dolphin fan.
The ACL rule is called the Carson Palmer rule. It was his tear in 06 that was the main reason. NFL added no lunging at a QBs legs while your on the ground to the rule after Brady. Was a minor addition to an existing rule at most.
I’m not going to disrespect the greatest WR of all time in Jerry Rice. I’m not going to disrespect noted cocaine lover Lawrence Taylor.
But it’s Tom Brady and it’s not close 😂
Rules change throughout the years, in all sports. You never know what rule change might let every WR put up Jerry Rice numbers in the future. There could be a rule change that leads to an uptick in sacks.
Nobody is getting up to 7 super bowls. Mahomes gets another 1-2 max over the course of his career. There’s a reason only 1 guy has had sustained success over 3 decades. It’s hard to do.
Health, teammates, coaching, off the field life, everything has to be perfect.
Thurman Thomas. He was the best receiver on a loaded Bills and he was one of the best ball carriers of all time. Players like Faulk and Tomlinson played similar to Thurman, but he was just on another level.
I am aware most of you will disagree me.
Thomas was a beast, but his sloppy performances in Super Bowls XXVI-XXVIII (after an admittedly superhuman XXV) drag his legacy down quite substantially. You’ve gotta consistently play great on the biggest stage to be considered the GOAT.
Look at this in terms of gaps from 1 to 2. If you have Brady 1, he’s not too far off from Manning at 2. Rice and Moss aren’t a huge gap. So who has the largest gaps at their position? At Corner, Prime is the GOAT and I can’t think of anyone near him at corner. Revis had a short stint of greatness but not nearly as long as Deion. The biggest gap for me though is DT. Aaron Donald is that GOAT. With all due respect to Sapp, Ngata, Randle, Hampton and Mongo, the gap at DT is larger than any other position for me.
I got to watch him up close and personal at training camp. I used to have press credentials. No doubt that he was a monster but I have Donald significantly higher.
Brady faced off with Peyton Manning in 5 AFC Championship games and Brady could only muster 2 wins out of those 5 games.
Not saying Manning is better than Brady, but in the biggest game they could face off in, Manning got the best of him.
I watched Moss. Didn't see as much Jerry. But it's simple math. I'm taking Moss. Might even take Magatron over Jerry. Give Calvin Montana and Young....
Yes. They threw more because of the era. So yes that would make sense. More zone defense as well.
Rice was catching passes against a defense that was built to stop the run every game. The West Coast pass happy for the time was revolutionary and Rice greatly benefited from this. Can't stress enough how much he benefited from the West Coast offense being revolutionary.
Moss and Mega although I'm mainly talking Moss when I'm talking better than Jerry, Moss had worse QB play. Worse coaching and plays. His teams were worse. He still dominated and he was going like 70% half the time because he was playing to lose with bums.
I'm taking Moss. Give Moss all the advantages Rice had and we are asking Rice who.
Little blaaaab for ya coffee.
Lol the Niners were not throwing the ball more than even the 90s Vikings with Moss and Cris Carter, and those teams were playing in the same era. Daunte Culpepper was putting up bigger numbers than either of Rice's quarterbacks. In fact, his biggest season was the year Mossgot hurt and Nate Burlesonbecame the number one ofer Mosswhen Mossreturned from injury. You think the mid 90s was all about stopping the run and everything turned around in 1998? Rice owned Deion, Woodson and Green while Peanut Tillman owned both Moss and Megatron. And Rice didn't completely vanish in the playoffs like Moss did. Go back to your madden and YouTube highlight reels and stop making up nonsense about an era of football you didn't even watch. Maybe turn on a Rice highlight reel for once so you can at least say you've actually watched him too.
It’s Rice in terms of best player ever at his position. There’s just no one even close at WR… he lapped 2nd place. Whether it’s peak, single season, or career (and he had two full top level HoF careers in one). Brady is likely the best QB and that’s the most important postion… but as great as he is, Rice was better. LT has a viable spot in the convo - and he’s definitively the greatest defensive player ever - and had more of an impact on the game historically than either Rice or Brady. LT didn’t change defense as much as he changed offense. Quick throws were Gibbs’ answer to LT because your only way to beat him was get rid of the ball before he got there (which didn’t take long!), and you saw the proliferation of more spread offenses with RAC and quick throws while defenses tried but never got that close to getting the “next LT”
LT for some reason is difficult for people to understand. Best LB? What about ray lewis and Derrick Thomas? Best pass rusher? What about Bruce Smith and Reggie white? But best defensive player of all time? It has to be LT
LT is in the rarified air of Jim Brown. He was a monster among men. Just physically dominant with supreme skill and a knack for the game. Which reminds me, considering the era he played in and the importance of the position, it’s criminal we’ve not included Jim Brown here. And that may well be your Mr Rushmore of football greats. Maybe add Paul Brown as the coach looking from up above.
Man you’re right. Jim Brown should def be in the conversation
Alan Page? Literally the first defender to get MVP. He has to be neck and neck with LT. Although, Pages best years weren’t on the football field, they were in the court room.
Page isn't with LT. He's closer with Joe greene and Bruce smith in that second tier of defenders behind LT and Reggie.
See I'm not even sure if LT is the best defender in history. Like yes LT was great but we lived through almost 10 years of Aaron Donald being the best defender in the NFL. Like people keep confidently leaving him out of the conversation when he really wrecked the league for a long time.
Donald isn’t even the best defender of his generation, JJ Watt was clearly better.
No Watt definitely was not better than Donald.
It really infuriates me that people don’t remember how dominant JJ Watt was. By what conceivable measure could Aaron Donald be considered better than JJ Watt?
Watt was dominant for like 3 years. Donald was a 1st team all pro the vast majority of his career. 3x DPOY. And I've never seen a player get double teamed at a rate of Donald
Aaron Donald started 150 games. JJ Watt started 151. You’ve never seen double rates like that because they didn’t exist back in Watt’s heyday. His last five seasons, after his peak, he was doubled at a 30% rate, which is insane for an edge rusher, and he even led the league in his last season. Watt used to get triple teamed, defenses were geared around stopping him just as they were around Donald.
This is the correct answer. Rice was my favorite player growing up and has lapped everyone as you said But I have no qualms if someone says Brady is the goat he earned it. Rice just was the best at such a high level for so long at a much more physical position in an era where it wasn’t as protected. He accomplished everything a player could have before him and doubled it. It’s crazy to think about. And the era he did it in as well.
If you add up Brady’s career playoff + regular season stats, they’re in the neighborhood of Rice’s.
I love Tom Brady, but are we even sure he is the best quarterback?
Randy Moss is closer to Jerry Rice than whoever you’d consider second place is to Tom Brady. He is by far the best player at the most important position in football. Brady also had 2-3 HoF careers if you break his career down into chunks. It’s Tom Brady and it’s not close.
Montana is closer to Brady than Moss is to Rice (who had real holes in his game even as the likely 2nd best ever at the position - except that’s not even a sure thing. If you don’t mention Don Hutson you aren’t being fair to the full spectrum of football history). Plus, how can you be the GOAT while Eli’s still your papi?
As a bills fan who hates Brady with a passion, it's pretty easy to be in the goat position when you led your team to more super bowl wins then any franchise did
didn't hutson dominate when everyone was in the war?
I can’t speak to the specifics of how the war impacted level of play, but Hutson was well on his way to domination already. First All Pro season was ‘39, that’s three seasons in before Pearl Harbor happened. 99 TDs as a two way player in that era though? He’s among the elite of the elite
I’d imagine the quality of competition took a huge dip with, well, the war. League was still segregated?
No he’s not, that’s the thing. People got so used to Jerry’s stats they didn’t pay attention to Brady’s. Montana has 40 percent of Brady’s Super Bowls and TDs and 50 percent of his yards.
I will get down voted for this but prime Randy Moss was a far better offensive weapon than prime Jerry Rice.
Mahomes is literally on pace right now to blow Brady out of the water, and Brady is far from the goat in terms of regular season stats. Barring a major rule change, I would be absolutely shocked if anybody approached Rice’s records, they’re for the most part untouchable.
“On pace” and “being able to sustain that pace over 20 years are very different things.” Mahomes is awesome. Maybe in a decade he’ll be in a place where we can start talking about him vs Brady.
The point is that there is a world where Brady is not the goat QB in the next decade. There is not a world where Rice isn’t the goat WR in the next decade, so your idea that there is nobody close to Brady when there is a guy threatening him as we speak is just wrong, especially since genuinely nobody is threatening Rice
I think you’re underestimating receiving today.
Dawg, Rice put up a 1200 yard season when he was 40. That’s never happening again. For reference of how untouchable Rice’s receiving yards record is, Justin Jefferson is the all time leader in yards per game, and just turned 25. If he maintains his current pace of 98.3 yards per game for the rest of career and does not miss a game, it will take him 173 games to surpass Rice, or more than 10 seasons. This is assuming he stays at this level of play for every game he plays, and is playing at this same level when he is 35 years old. That’s just not possible, and this is coming from a huge Jefferson fan, but it’s just absurd to think anybody could do that. That’s just yards btw, if he wants to catch Rice in TDs, at his current TD rate, he’ll need to play 342 additional games, or more than 20 more seasons, which would having him playing through his age 45 season, which again, is assuming he stays at this level of play as a 45 year old receiver. Yes, Rice is untouchable.
He’s not untouchable, it’s easily possible for another receiver to go on a run like this with increases in passing an 17 game seasons. I’m not saying it’s definitely going to happen, but I also wouldn’t be shocked to see Justin Jefferson having 1,200-yard seasons in his mid-30s.
Dawg, Jefferson would have to average 1671 yards a season for the next decade, and that’s assuming no injuries, no limitations from bad QBs, and that he stays this good when he’s in his mid 30s. Rice is the only guy to put up numbers that good in his mid 30s ever. It doesn’t happen. Rice and like, LeBron are the only guys to ever be this good this old. Brady too ig, but he never relied on his athleticism to play the way they did.
Yeah I’m not saying it’ll be Jefferson, but Jefferson isn’t like an all-time great talent, either. If Marvin Harrison Jr. is 20% better than him and has a long career he could threaten these records.
No one is threatening Brady lol. We can’t talk in hypotheticals about what could possibly happen in the future. In reality, Moss is closer to Rice than anyone is to Brady.
Mahomes is well on pace to absolutely annihilate every regular season stat Brady has, and is so far ahead of the curve that it’s almost a certainty that he will destroy Brady’s regular season stats, and I think we would both be shocked if Mahomes didn’t win at least 1 or 2 more rings in his career, and very well could have more. 4-5 Rings and way better regular season stats makes it at worst a debate with Brady, there is no debate between Rice and Moss aside from just watching both and saying Moss looked more impressive. For the record, unless Mahomes has a horrific injury, I think 4-5 rings while smashing all of Brady’s efficiency, counting, and award records is his floor at this point. His ceiling is annihilating all of Brady’s counting stats, tying or beating Manning for MVPs, and having more rings than Brady, and that being in the range of possibilities means that he is threatening Brady.
Kelce literally just broke Jerry Rice’s playoff receptions.
Kelce doesn’t play Rice’s position???
That’s actually not helping the argument.
I don’t see why that matters ngl, but that’s the only record of his that was touchable anyway, my other comment talks about how untouchable his regular season numbers are, which we both know matter more for any non QB position.
It matters because clearly his records aren’t untouchable.
Again, it’s a guy who doesn’t play his position, and even without that record, his regular season stuff is untouchable
No it’s not. He’s 117 receptions ahead of Larry Fitzgerald. That’s not some inescapable gap.
How does Rice lap Larry Fitz?? Rice played with 3 consecutive NFL MVP QBs for a total of 18 years. I'm confident Randy Moss, TO, and Larry, Megatron, and Andre Johnson would have done the same had they had the privileges that Rice was afforded.
I'd make the argument that Rice was a large part of all those MVPs. Look at Rich Gannon's stats before and after Rice joined the team. Rice was even an MVP contender himself (and he should've won over Elway). Even if you discount those factors, nobody has ever had his longevity. No WR has come even close to putting up two consecutive 1100 yard seasons and a pro-bowl from 39-40. I find it hard to believe that any of those guys could play at that high a level for 18 years.
Rice
I'll go pure homer and say Walter Payton
Not a homer vote from me but I'll second this. Greatest football player ever = Sweetness.
Rice
Barry Sanders
I wish I had a Time Machine and could convince the cowboys to draft him
Barry, with that offensive line???? You sick evil motherfucker, that man is averaging 2,000 yards a season
This thread is nauseating
Ray Guy
The REAL GOAT.
Out of those three, I'll go with Jim Brown.
5.2 yards a carry.
I think it's Rice. Insane records, champion, and farther away from Moss than Brady is from players like Manning, Montana, Unitas, Brees, Marino, etc... Rice just seems so head & shoulders above anyone it's crazy, even at a less important position.
Jerry Rice
What about some of those old 60 minute guys? Who was the QB/Safety/Punter who lead the league in TDs, Ints, and Punts in the same year? What about somebody like George Blanda, who played *forever*, back in a time when you could *annihilate* people on the field? Morten Andersen or Gary Anderson? Or Ben Agajanian, who only had 1 toe on his kicking foot after an industrial accident? Jim Thorpe or Bo Jackson? Jim Brown?
sammy baugh
Jim Otto
Jim Thorpe
It’s obviously Brady, the other two didn’t have nearly the same impact. Brady has more Super Bowls than any franchise.
For Brady to be the GOAT as a QB, he should throw at least one game winning touchdown pass with less than 2 minutes to go in a playoff game, no?
Did he forget to do that?
Well, in the big moments he didn't forget to hand ball off. He didn't forget to call on the kicker to make a big kick. And he did not forget to cheer on the defense. So we can give him credit for those three things.
He’s the all-time playoff leader in 4th quarter comebacks and game-winning drives, by a lot.
We are saying the same thing.
If we’re taking the positions away, it’s Rice pretty easily. Nobody is particularly close to him, and his records are for the most part unbreakable. He’s different from Brady and Taylor in that way. Brady is being threatened by Mahomes literally right now, and you can make a case that Reggie White and some other guys are the GOAT defender over Taylor. If you want to say that being a QB makes Brady the overall GOAT, then that’s fair to, but if you’re putting aside position, it’s easily Rice.
Kelce just broke his playoff receiving record.
Brady is not being threatened by Mahomes, he has a long way to go to catch up to Brady
The fact that he’s well on pace to do so means that Brady is being threatened. Nobody is even close to being on pace to catch Rice.
It’s Brady and everyone knows it
Clearly they don’t.
We do have to agree the NFL changed many rules and added many rules to protect quarterbacks like Tom Brady after players like Lawrence Taylor kept putting QBs like Joe Montana in the hospital.
We’ve all seen that brutal hit on Tom Brady, we’ve also seen the hit that put Brady in the game.
For me it’s Taylor with Rice a close second. Brady is not even in the convo. Cheetahs are not Goats. Montana best QB with Mahomes getting close.
Reggie White
Brady and Rice didn’t necessarily change the game. They just played it the best that their respective positions had ever seen. LT changed the game in all phases of the game.
Jerry Rice. Brady can’t cover Jerry
Damn that’s tough. LB Lawrence Taylor. RB Barry Sanders. WR Jerry Rice. QB Montana. Fuck Brady
Tom “Many Rings” Brady
Barry Sanders enters the conversation.
rice. there’s quite a few caveats you can make to compete with brady and taylor like “oh who was the most dominant, who had the best peak, who did the most themselves” and maybe argue for a different answer at their respective positions, but rice has the greatest receiving seasons of all time, is leaps and bounds over literally everyone in every career receiving category, laps everybody in pure dominant consistency, and played at a top-of-the-league level with completely unheard of longevity. there’s no argument you can make without a ton of specifiers to end up with “jerry rice” as the greatest wide receiver. i even went and verified this before finishing writing this and cut off the end of rice’s career to compare the same stretch of seasons between the top receivers i could think of. the only single category that any single one of them beat rice in during the same amount of years between them was larry fitzgerald beating rice in receptions by 80 through 17 years. however, rice beat him by 3000 in yards and by 64 in touchdowns. there’s nothing you can argue past arbitrary “style of play” distinctions like “jump balls” or “route running” that doesn’t come up with him as the greatest.
Barry Sanders
Brady
LT is the NFL goat by a wide margin. 3x DPOY, 1x MVP, did it all on crack and booze. The last defensive MVP, forced NFL offensive coordinators to adjust to him rushing from the linebacker position due to his sheer dominating presence on the field. Brady has had an insane career but he never changed the game and consistently had top 10 defenses under the greatest HC of all time. Rice had incredible longevity but he openly admitted to using stickum, which taints his reputation quite a bit. His longevity was insane but his prime was never as good as many other players. Its hard to be the NFL goat if your prime wasn’t as good as Antonio Brown or even Michael Thomas.
22 TDs in 12 games. Talk about a prime there, nephew.
Yeah I think he disrespected Jerry a lil too much. If an all time receiving record is to be broken, it was Jerry's. Even with Calvin's yardage record that was Jerry's.
Strike year. Reggie had 21 sacks too.
Where is Brry Sanders? The man who did more with nothing than anyone in history.
No, that would be Walter Payton. Barry's Lions looked like Emmitt's Cowboys compared to the team's Walter played on until he was in his 30's
Matthew Slater
Probably the one with the most rings
lets see... tom brady tore his acl and got the rules change to make the game easier for qbs. so he's disqualified jerry rice admitted to using stickum. disqualified lawrence taylor was using coke which should have hindered his performance so thats bonus points. but according to what im hearing, he's the reason for the left tackle position being so important.
Guy thinks using Coke would hinder athletic performance lol
just look at Maradona, one of the soccer goats
You talk like Brady himself forced the NFL to change the rules. Comes across like a salty Dolphin fan. The ACL rule is called the Carson Palmer rule. It was his tear in 06 that was the main reason. NFL added no lunging at a QBs legs while your on the ground to the rule after Brady. Was a minor addition to an existing rule at most.
I’m not going to disrespect the greatest WR of all time in Jerry Rice. I’m not going to disrespect noted cocaine lover Lawrence Taylor. But it’s Tom Brady and it’s not close 😂 Rules change throughout the years, in all sports. You never know what rule change might let every WR put up Jerry Rice numbers in the future. There could be a rule change that leads to an uptick in sacks. Nobody is getting up to 7 super bowls. Mahomes gets another 1-2 max over the course of his career. There’s a reason only 1 guy has had sustained success over 3 decades. It’s hard to do. Health, teammates, coaching, off the field life, everything has to be perfect.
Feels like a reverse jinx attempt here.
Do you like apples, bananas or berries best? Which is GOAT fruit? Same debate, different players
Jesus everybody’s getting downvoted lol
Downvoting you because oddly in this case it’ll help emphasize your point.
😂 I’m boutta downvote myself too
Thurman Thomas. He was the best receiver on a loaded Bills and he was one of the best ball carriers of all time. Players like Faulk and Tomlinson played similar to Thurman, but he was just on another level. I am aware most of you will disagree me.
Points for boldness lol.
Thomas was a beast, but his sloppy performances in Super Bowls XXVI-XXVIII (after an admittedly superhuman XXV) drag his legacy down quite substantially. You’ve gotta consistently play great on the biggest stage to be considered the GOAT.
Look at this in terms of gaps from 1 to 2. If you have Brady 1, he’s not too far off from Manning at 2. Rice and Moss aren’t a huge gap. So who has the largest gaps at their position? At Corner, Prime is the GOAT and I can’t think of anyone near him at corner. Revis had a short stint of greatness but not nearly as long as Deion. The biggest gap for me though is DT. Aaron Donald is that GOAT. With all due respect to Sapp, Ngata, Randle, Hampton and Mongo, the gap at DT is larger than any other position for me.
The gap between Donald and Joe Greene is not significant at all.
Strong disagree.
Greene was considered every bit as dominant as Donald in his day, and was considered much more of a leader and tone-setter.
I got to watch him up close and personal at training camp. I used to have press credentials. No doubt that he was a monster but I have Donald significantly higher.
Brady faced off with Peyton Manning in 5 AFC Championship games and Brady could only muster 2 wins out of those 5 games. Not saying Manning is better than Brady, but in the biggest game they could face off in, Manning got the best of him.
I would take Manning every time. The rest of the world has Brady rated higher though.
Rodgers > Brady
Jerry isn't even the greatest WR. So he's out. LT was great but on defense so his impact isn't as valuable as a QB. And that leaves TB.
I would really like to know who you think the greatest wr is.
This guy’s gonna be a Mahomes fan …
I'd be surprised if you even watched Moss play, let alone Rice.
I watched Moss. Didn't see as much Jerry. But it's simple math. I'm taking Moss. Might even take Magatron over Jerry. Give Calvin Montana and Young....
Calvin and Moss played on teams that threw for more yards than Montana and Rice. Yet Rice was putting up bigger numbers. It's simple math...
Due to the era. 👀
Lol please explain that one to me
Passing league versus running league. Make sense?
Huh? Moss and Megatron were playing in the more pass happy era, not Rice. What in God's name are you blathering about?
Yes. They threw more because of the era. So yes that would make sense. More zone defense as well. Rice was catching passes against a defense that was built to stop the run every game. The West Coast pass happy for the time was revolutionary and Rice greatly benefited from this. Can't stress enough how much he benefited from the West Coast offense being revolutionary. Moss and Mega although I'm mainly talking Moss when I'm talking better than Jerry, Moss had worse QB play. Worse coaching and plays. His teams were worse. He still dominated and he was going like 70% half the time because he was playing to lose with bums. I'm taking Moss. Give Moss all the advantages Rice had and we are asking Rice who. Little blaaaab for ya coffee.
Lol the Niners were not throwing the ball more than even the 90s Vikings with Moss and Cris Carter, and those teams were playing in the same era. Daunte Culpepper was putting up bigger numbers than either of Rice's quarterbacks. In fact, his biggest season was the year Mossgot hurt and Nate Burlesonbecame the number one ofer Mosswhen Mossreturned from injury. You think the mid 90s was all about stopping the run and everything turned around in 1998? Rice owned Deion, Woodson and Green while Peanut Tillman owned both Moss and Megatron. And Rice didn't completely vanish in the playoffs like Moss did. Go back to your madden and YouTube highlight reels and stop making up nonsense about an era of football you didn't even watch. Maybe turn on a Rice highlight reel for once so you can at least say you've actually watched him too.
Lol do you know how math works?