Purple Insider - a Minnesota Vikings and NFL podcast - Former Viking Sage Rosenfels breaks down the 5 best players he played with

Episode Date: June 17, 2020

Sage talks about what it was like to play with Rickey Williams during his all-time great 2002 season, why he threw the ball to Andre Johnson, the best throw he's ever seen from Brett Favre, why Zach Thomas is underrated and what it was like behind the scenes with Eli Manning.  Read Matthew Coller's written work at PurpleInsider.substack.com And fill out this 60-second survey to help us at Blue Wire better serve your podcast needs and you will be entered to win a pair of air pods. https://forms.office.com/Pages/ResponsePage.aspx?id=BugBBZdAw0aNFUvtuGkgyhnTao1hdWxOjJwTA2fwHGJUN0hUNEhaSExWN0RRRFdCV1ZOTkdHR1IwOCQlQCN0PWcu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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The Compound on the Blue Wire Podcast Network. All right. Welcome into another episode of Purple Insider. Matthew Collar, along with our journeyman insider, Sage Rosenfels, former NFL quarterback. And, you know, the great thing about talking with the journeyman quarterback, as I have discovered through our years of podcasting and live radio together, Sage, is that you have played with a lot of other great NFL players. And so I noticed that NFL.com is having a lot of their ex-player analysts give their five favorite teammates or five best players that they ever played with.

And I would like to do the same with you, Sage. Are you ready to go? I'm ready for this. And in full disclosure, when you said to me, let's talk about your five favorite teammates I didn't immediately go to who are sort of the five best players I played with I went to guys in my mind like D'Amico Ryans was a linebacker with the Houston Texans he was a second round pick he started as a rookie I played them for three years. Not an unbelievable player, but just one of those blue-collar type of guys.

Great teammate. Total leader of that defense. So I was sort of thinking guys like that. By the way, he's now the linebackers coach of the San Francisco 49ers, sure enough, with Kyle Shanahan and that crew. So I was thinking guys like that. But was he a Hall of Fame type player? No.

I mean, maybe he went to a Pro Bowl or so during his time in the National Football League, but I definitely did play with a lot of great players, a lot of Hall of Famers. I think there might be anywhere between five or six, seven Hall of Fame type players that I played with, and I'm looking forward to talking about a lot of these guys. All right, so first player on your list you have submitted your list to me so I will just give your list and then we can break down each one is Ricky Williams and I will tell you that the a football life documentary and if you go to NFL game pass you can watch all of them there's a lot of them that are on YouTube but that was the one that put those documentaries and maybe even

NFL Network on the map because it was so good and it was so interesting. I think people often think of Ricky Williams as just being like the guy who kind of ruined his career because of pot, which now we look at as, oh, the NFL is not even going to worry about marijuana after this. It's amazing how much we've changed the connection between morality and marijuana over the last 20 years from Ricky Williams' time. But at his best, we often go into the running backs don't matter. Ricky Williams is usually connected to that crazy draft day trade from the New Orleans Saints, but had a Hall of Fame level career and was one of the most unstoppable players to ever play. So what was it like to play with Ricky Williams?

So I was traded to Miami from Washington in 2002 for a cup of coffee and a loaf of bread. And I showed up and Ricky Williams had also been traded that offseason. Of course, I was traded during training camp. He was traded sometime in the summer or the spring for two first-round draft picks. So there was a lot of pressure on Ricky to have this great year. We had a very old offensive line. Great group of guys, the guys who were definitely on the last – almost every single one of them, except for maybe one, was on the last year, maybe two years of their career.

Sort of that veteran savvy group, you know. And Dave Wanstead, you know, the old Bears coach and Jimmy Johnson mentality, it was all about running the football and defense. I mean, it was very, very conservative football. We would run draw way too much on third down and seven. You know, we just weren't a team that threw the ball. Jay Fiedler did not throw the ball usually more than 20, 25 times a game. Very conservative.

Keep it tight to the vest. Win the turnover battle, constantly talking about turnovers in our meetings it was uh so all this pressure was on ricky uh with this old offensive line and in 2002 i think other than the farb season farb season was at in 2000 i was absolutely phenomenal but ricky ran for 1850 yards uh with that offense we never saw two high high safety defenses unless it was like third and forever. It was always an extra safety in the box, and it was basically up to Ricky to run them over or to make a miss or both. And what I saw him do that year, I played with Adrian, again,

in 0-9, who maybe ran for 1,300 that year, 1,200 that year. And I know Adrian had some 2,000-yard season. But what Ricky did that year was the best running back play that I saw in my time in the NFL. And also, like mentally, never made a mistake. You know, he didn't miss a protection. He didn't miss a route. He didn't miss a route. He didn't miss really anything. He was sort of a coach on the field. And you just don't get that very often

from a running back. You don't get that sort of high intellectual player. And sometimes you do, but a lot of times you don't. And he was a guy that was very, very coachable, always knew what he was doing and that's just as a quarterback that's a great thing to have uh on third down he's a true three down back we didn't play backup running backs very much occasionally Travis Minor the old Florida State running back he would pop in for a couple carries a game but it was really Ricky Williams like 90 some percent of the time it was all him and he was very very dependable, and he rarely got hurt. And as the game went on, and he's like 33 carries,

he was still pounding and running people over, and a lot of times won ballgames with his carries late in the fourth quarter. So the numbers on this season are preposterous. 383 carries, which we could just never dream of a running back having. You mentioned 1,853 yards, 16 touchdowns, average 116 yards a game, and tacked on 47 receptions out of the backfield at almost eight yards per reception. So even when he wasn't getting the handoffs, he was getting a lot of throws his way, 59 total targets and 430 touches. How a guy can run almost 400 times an average 4.8 yards per carry is wild. I mean, these are things that just would not happen at all in today's NFL. And I didn't

realize until I watched the Football Life documentary that he was intellectual about the game. Now, there are usually not very many dummies walking around the NFL field. I mean, it's a very complicated game. You have to be smart to succeed. But I think with Ricky Williams, he's one of those guys that was aloof from the outside. And you thought, you know, you just never really know what's going on in this guy's head head and you don't realize that he would have that intellectual part of the game yeah he was a you know smart guy um always on it with his with the you know protections for a quarterback are really important defenses get complicated every week sometimes your rig protections you call it this but versus this front we're going to sort of break our rules and every week that changes and there was just no doubt that Ricky was going to get it right uh he was always

on top of it so great teammate great runner I think he was almost 250 pounds that year uh I think he weighed about 240 245 uh he had a run versus the Jets uh sort of a game winner maybe it was a tie or maybe we're up by two points or something. And he hits one for 75 yards. And, you know, he's outrunning safeties and corners. He's 245 pounds. I mean, he's a big, thick, sturdy guy. But he also could make people miss.

And just a phenomenal runner. And tough as nails. The the next year he only runs for about 1300 i believe um similar amount of carries and so if you were at the time in south florida as like a media member uh you know the alex marvez's of the world um and you know everyone understood sort of him quitting the the fall of the third year, the Weinsteads last year, had some to do with the marijuana issue that he got busted for marijuana maybe a third time. But another aspect was we just never upgraded that offensive line. We had drafted some guys who were playing, you know, third round rookies or fourth rounders, fifth rounders starting very young group very inexperienced and he knew he was going to get another 370 carries plus 45 catches plus you know in pass protection you're hitting people too linebackers blitzing you

you've got to light them up right so you're it's not like you have you know uh plays off physically um uh when there's a pass call so uh i think part of it also other than the marijuana thing was he just knew that he wasn't going to go through another season and get the absolute crap beat out of them and so there definitely was a sort of dave weinstead mentality versus overuse of ricky williams and that was a common common media conversation about those, you know, those down there who really understood the situation well. But, you know, it's much easier to talk about, you know, why he quit because of the marijuana and things like that.

He obviously was going through a lot. I don't know if you saw the run Ricky run 30 for 30. It's, you know, it goes into his – they find him in California when he's quit, and he's smoking weed and the whole thing. But what I saw in 2002, that 853 yards, was the best running back play in my 12 years in the NFL. And my understanding is that he moved past that part of his life, like that he stopped using marijuana, found other ways to deal with it. And I think that now

we would have done a lot more to help Ricky Williams with some of the things he was dealing with mentally because we acknowledge them as opposed to just making the guy into kind of like a criminal in the way that we look at him or not acknowledging or trying to help from an NFL organizational standpoint. We saw what happened with Everson Griffin where they supported him and then brought him back and he was still good. And it was like, yes, this is how things should be done, but they weren't back in 2002. So yeah, people, people were really upset when he quit. And it's easy to make, as you said, make easy to make them into a criminal.

Now I think he is some sort of, I don't know if you call him a healer but you know he's big into obviously he was into yoga and you know um so all these alternative medicines and i believe he does have some sort of a weed company and i think he might even be a part owner of a liquor store in austin texas so uh he, and he works for the University of Texas. I mean, he calls games for, I don't know if he calls, I think he does maybe halftime, pregame, postgame, University of Texas type stuff for the Longhorn Network, gets paid there as well, and yet also sells marijuana. I mean, what a deal.

What a life. I mean, what an unusual life, not your typical football player. Right. What a world we live in. And also another note about Ricky Williams, the team that I used to call single-A baseball for, the Batavia Muckdogs, Ricky Williams, same guy, played for them one summer because he was trying baseball.

And I remember asking people about it, and they said if he hit a ground ball to the left side, it was a hit. Like he really couldn't hit that well at that level. I mean, single A is a pretty high level compared to playing in college or something like that. But if he hit the ball in play, he was pretty much getting to first base because he was by far the fastest person on the field. He was drafted and and

he said played minor league baseball and and he would play baseball in the offseason at Texas which just sort of shocked me that like yeah one of the best you know we we didn't have those types of guys obviously we had a couple guys that ran track you know a couple receivers that would try to run track uh in the offseason but the fact that Ricky was playing baseball. And when we would play catch, again, running backs usually can't throw. Like Adrian Pearson couldn't throw at all, and almost no running backs can. They're just saying, Ricky would play catch with the quarterbacks. He loved warming up before practice and had a nice throwing motion to throw a nice ball.

He'd want to work on his drop a little bit. A very, very unique player and definitely in my top five for best players I played with. All right, next on the list is somebody that you might expect would be on Sage Rosenfeld's list of players that you have played with, and that is Brett Favre. Now, we used to run a promo on our old Score North days of you talking about how after the interception in 2009 that you

said to Brett, Brett, you are the best football player I've ever been around, when you guys were sitting on the water coolers during the coin flip. And, you know, I just can't imagine the view that you had for that season, starting when he comes in and the circus that it was in training camp, and then seeing the season that developed, the throw against San Francisco that's legendary, the playoff game where you light up the Cowboys, and then everything that happened in New Orleans. But what can you say about Brett Favre that I guess anyone who didn't have that close of a view like wouldn't

know about him since he's so interesting but also so well chronicled in his career? Yeah so when people talk about the strong arm which he did I mean he was 39 years old turning 40 that year and his arm was insanely strong but the accuracy that's what was really crazy to me his accuracy was off the charts and how many balls he'd fit in the tightest windows and then he would move defensive players to sort of get his guy open you know a linebacker or a safety would drop into the hole that where the receiver was running his dig route or run his curl route and somehow Brett would find a way to move the linebacker for no reason, get him out of his position. Of course, he's going to get yelled at by the coach the next day on the other side,

but he would find ways to get other people open. But I think what really surprised me was how insanely accurate he was. I knew he had this crazy strong arm, but his accuracy and his ability to take hits. I mean, to do that for 19, 20 years, to take those types of hits, just not get hurt, just absolutely mind boggling. And the best quarterback that I played with, and probably is the best all-around football player. He did not have that pretty boy quarterback, you know, sort of mentality as we all know. So played unbelievable that year.

The stats you put up that year showing up, I think three weeks before the season started, I believe we had two preseason games left is when he showed up for him to play, you know, that well within the short preseason, then right into the season. And they, you know, he had a a couple easy games off the bat at Cleveland. He threw for like 110 yards. He ran easy.

Adrian Pearson threw a guy into the bench that game on a run. But week three, we were home versus San Francisco, and we should have lost that game. And Brett finds a way to bring us back, to will us to victory, and it's just, again, mind-boggling to me. I was 30, 31 at the time to think to myself, this guy is eight or nine years older than me, and he's still doing this at this high a level.

I just simply couldn't believe it. Is the throw against San Francisco the best throw you've ever seen? Yes. Best throw I've ever seen. Not only just, I mean, even if that was in the first quarter, it was an absolutely amazing throw. But it was on the last play, basically the last play of the game. I don't know if there was 10 seconds left or 20 seconds left or something like that. But it was right at the end, and there was just absolutely no room for error and the fact

that he even found him open again this is a this is a he brett sort of rolled to the right and and greg lewis who was the receiver who caught that ball versus san francisco was on the left side and his in his route he really doesn't cross the middle of the field but since brett held on to the ball that sort of short post, the 20-yard post turned into a 45-yard post, 50-yard post, and Brett threw that thing on a line in the back of the end zone. Yeah, that's the best throw that I ever saw. You know, what's interesting about Favre is that he gets a little bit known for, I mean, not a little bit for the gunslinger thing,

but a little bit known for the interceptions that happened at the biggest moments. I mean, one thing is you have to be in those big moments to have that happen to you to throw those interceptions, for one, and you don't get to those big moments unless you're one of the best players ever. But the other point is that in terms of his interception percentage, Favre really didn't throw more picks than other people, like per throw. I was just pulling this up. And his interception percentage for his career is basically the same as Kurt Warner's. But we never think of Kurt Warner as being reckless. We think of him as

just throwing darts everywhere. And in a way, because of those big interceptions, I don't think he had one year in his career where he threw a bunch of them. But because he was always willing to give it a shot, especially in times that they were down or big situations, as opposed to checking down and taking some yards and then running the clock out on yourself when you're down. I mean, I think that that is respectable and also one of the reasons that he is great and he gets known for the big interceptions.

And of course the one in 09 is devastating. But I think it's part of what made him great is that he was willing to take those risks, and you just very, very rarely see quarterbacks who were. And I imagine from your perspective, the role that you were in, that taking a risk like that down the field, that he would do eight to ten times a game and succeed on half of them or more is a really hard thing to do when there's so much pressure at that position. When you're a backup quarterback, one of your biggest worries is taking those risks and failing because then now you're on the street because you threw too many receptions in the game. You don't

have much leeway to make those big mistakes. But that just started the way Favre played. And I think probably if you go back and watch all the old NFL film stuff on him back in the Mike Holmgren days and, you know, John Gruner, Andy Reid, this quarterback's coach, they know they're dealing with this super talented player who loves to push the ball down the field, loves to try to throw the ball down the field,

loves to try to throw the ball in tight windows. They see him do it so much. And then he would just throw these terrible interceptions or throw it right to somebody. And you're sitting there scratching your head going, why did he do that? Why didn't he just check the ball down? But that was his mentality. He was the guy who wanted to push the ball down the field. He wanted to make the defense pay for

ever being out of position he didn't want to play conservatively and it worked 95 98 percent of the time and then occasionally you'd have that you know just bad interception and sometimes at the worst moments but uh for all the good that he did on the football team uh and for an offense i think whatever those interceptions were, were well worth it for all the teams that he played for. Yeah, I kind of think about it like Steph Curry shooting 40-foot three-pointers, where some of them are going to be an air ball or just look terrible every once in a while. But to have the guts to shoot it, and then also you're going to make a lot more than you're going to miss if you have Steph Curry's talent.

But if you told him, no, sorry, because you're going to airball one every once in a while, you can't take that shot, well, then he never becomes Steph Curry. And Favre is kind of the same way. You do see Steph Curry occasionally just completely airball a three-pointer, and it's coming off a screen at 25 feet, and you're like, man, that's a terrible shot. But he also makes two out of the three of those, it seems like sometimes. Sometimes there's a small line between Steph Curry and John Starks. Like, you know, they're like sometimes you end up being a John Starks

and you go three of 18, but you just keep shooting. You just keep slinging, and that's the way Favre played the game. Yeah, thanks for bringing that up. That was the most devastating moment of my childhood was the Knicks losing the NBA Finals there. So I appreciate that. Charles Smith? Was it Charles Smith?

Yeah, yeah, Charles Smith. Yep. Charles Smith could get the ball in the hoop. I know. Yep. Those Knicks teams, man, lots of devastation there. It set me up well along with growing up in Buffalo to cover the Minnesota Vikings. Next player on your –

Well, by the way, since you're in Buffalo and you're right in between Detroit and New York, I always felt the Knicks, I know we're going off subject here, the Knicks were really just sort of a carbon copy of the bad. They're trying to be the bad boys. They were, I think, in some ways more talented. Ewing was a legit

center who could score. I don't think the bad boys really had that. They're more of like bruisers on the inside. But when they played the Bulls and, you know, the Detroit, obviously, we sort of, you know, beat the Bulls a few times and finally Chicago got over the hump. Then the Knicks came, became sort of that bully type of person in the Eastern Conference. They had Charles Oakley at the time. But Ewing was not a bully like that. He sure tried to be, but he could not be Rick Mahorn or Bill Laimbeer by any means. So, yeah, those were great series.

And they knew, those teams knew they had to be super physical to play against Michael Jordan. It was Anthony Mason and Oakley. Those guys were the ones that were always beating people up. Doc Rivers, for a little bit of a time, was more of their defensive guy. But they had, like you said, they had more snipers. Hubert Davis, Derek Humphrey, or not Derek, Derek Harper. You know, guys who could shoot from outside than probably Detroit.

But it was... The X-Man. The X-Man, Xavier McDaniel. Oh, yeah? Yeah, that's right. He was another physical player. He was, yeah. Some good teams growing up there, but, of course, never get over the top.

Anyway, so the next player on your list maybe someday will get over the top for the Hall of Fame, Zach Thomas, linebacker from the Miami Dolphins, who was your classic underrated, underappreciated small guy. Anybody who listens to the show knows my appreciation for Sam Mills. I think he was very, very similar to Sam Mills just a few years later. Very similar to Sam Mills. When I showed up in Miami in 2002, I got traded after the third preseason game. So, you know, I'm walking in.

I got about four days to prepare for this game actually I got traded we we fly the very next day to Houston uh to play the Houston Texans in the opening of what was Reliant Stadium at the time NRG Stadium it was the first ever game there pre-season game um and you know Ricky is going back home, University of Texas. And, and I will always remember in the, in the hotel, uh, as we get to, as we get to Houston, I don't really know anybody. And Zach Thomas is one of those guys who immediately brings me, I know he's this great player, don't know the guy, but I'm not sure if it's because I'm a big 12 guy or something, but he immediately introduces me to his family who had driven in from the game

from West Texas and just sort of like immediately treated me as like a family member. So you take away all the football stuff, just a phenomenal teammate. And I played with Zach for four years. My first year, that year we're talking about with ricky williams who runs for 1853 we had ricky as a pro bowler on offense nobody else okay seven pro bowlers on defense it's crazy patrick certaine sam madison brock marion at safety uh jason taylor zach thomas adewalea gulie uh is another defensive and opposite jason taylor and you know maybe someone else in that mix oh oh tim bowens uh defensive lineman that was just a absolute stud one of the strong probably like the larry allen

of that team just the strongest player on that football team. And so just loaded the – but it was unquestioned that Zach was the leader of that team. And even the next year, we trade for Junior Seau, a first-round draft pick. And Junior is already a first-foul Hall of Famer at that point. He's about year 12, year 13, ends up playing 20 years. And even when he come in, who's, you know, just a leader of the San Diego Chargers defense, Zach was still the leader of that.

And Junior even sort of knew that. And he was a leader too, absolutely. But it was sort of Zach's football team. And the guy could just make tons of tackles. We ran this 4-3 where the two interior defensive linemen took up a lot of space. And so he would run. I mean, again, Tim Bowens was so big. We had another guy named Chester Taylor.

Not Chester Taylor, Larry Chester. Another D lineman. He's like 350. Just huge boys in there. Not pass rushers, just big, huge bodies. And Zach would just run side to side. One of the quickest guys in the small space that you'll see from that linebacker position wasn't great in having to cover, and a lot of times in that defense, he had to cover tight ends a lot.

Tony Gonzalez's would sometimes eat him up in the passing game. But for the most part, and he was just he would have 17 tackles a game 18 tackles a game 19 12 it was just tackle tackle tackle all the time and nobody ran on our defense very similar to those vikings defenses uh when i was up there when children's was there they had three years with their number one against the run we were very similar to that it seemed like we're always top five and stopping the run. Put quarterbacks in the third-long situation, and then that's when Jason Taylor did his thing and ended up being in the Hall of Fame.

Junior Seau ended up being in the Hall of Fame, and I think Zach should be there as well. Before we get back to the conversation, got to take a second to thank our sponsors, SodaStick. Go to SodaStick.com to get your original Minnesota sports-inspired goods. If you have not seen yet the Can't Stop the Feelin' hat, you've got to check it out. It's part of an official partnership with Adam Feelin'. If you need to get some new hats for summer, they're having their annual summer hat deal right now.

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That era is a golden age of running backs. You just have so many players across the league who were legit, straight-up superstar running backs. Those were the guys that were on the cover of Madden oftentimes were star running backs. There were only a couple of quarterbacks during that early 2000s era that were big difference makers, obviously Tom Brady and Peyton Manning and for a little bit Dante Culpepper.

But there's a pretty big drop-off after like the fourth or fifth best quarterback where now there's 25 quarterbacks who you consider stars or rising stars or guys that have potential to be franchise quarterbacks. That just really wasn't the case in the early 2000s, so there's a lot of teams that were built around running. If you had Zach Thomas, that guy was way more valuable than maybe he would be now, although now he'd probably just adapt to be better in coverage. What's also amazing is the AFC East at that time was legit, I think, the best division in football.

The Buffalo Bills had Drew Bledsoe at quarterback. Tom Brady, young Tom Brady with the Patriots. Chad Pennington was the quarterback of the Jets, young as well, but a solid quarterback. Curtis Martin in the backfield, right? Curtis Martin. Kevin Mawai was their center. He was always the guy that was super quick and would give Zach some trouble.

But when I showed up there in 2002, we went to Indianapolis in the old RCA dome, and the divisions had just changed but before I'd gotten there Peyton Manning with Indianapolis Colts they also I think all played in that same division so he was playing against Tom Brady Peyton Manning drew blood so I mean really really quarterback driven uh division and Zach was sort of the quarterback of that defense it's I know it's like sort of a cliche to say but he really ran the whole thing he organized everybody when we would go to games so you know you do these uh you do the walkthrough on saturday

you know you have some meetings you shower up you put on your suit um and then you get on you know you get on the bus to go to the airport or whatever, and you fly. When we were on that bus or on the plane, Zach had these sheets of paper, sort of a booklet, that he had drawn up pass plays out of the sort of the formations that the previous team had run a whole bunch of the previous games. And he would constantly flip through those like flashcards. And because he wanted his mind just to see all the things they do out of these various formations. So then he did his rookie year and he got so worried that if he didn't do it, he wouldn't play as well. So he did it for every game for the rest of his career because he had success early on.

And, you know, once you're doing something that's working, it's like wearing the same socks, you know, or whatever it might be. And so Zach would do that and prepare, prepare, prepare, and play the mental side so physically he could just react. And that's why he played so fast. That's always a part, a major part of the story that we just don't often hear from the outside I think we have much more access now and players like our buddy Jeff Schwartz who will be on Twitter breaking down protections and film and stuff like that and you really show the outside world how much goes into it to be a great player and if you have the physical talent the will and then it goes along with, like you said,

the dedication and intelligence to do it, you could become a Hall of Famer, borderline Hall of Fame player. But there are very few who have that intersection of all of those different things. And for someone like Zach Thomas to overcome the height element of it takes even more work. So very cool with him. Yeah, 5'10, maybe five, 11. He also played in an era, an era where, you know, he was,

you could say physical with receivers over the middle. I mean, he was knocking people out. It was, this was pre all, whatever it is now. I mean, you ran a slant and you better watch out. Cause Zach Thomas will absolutely take your head off. And there was again, that type of era. A lot of people were worried that he was going to have concussion issues when he was done. I actually ran to Zach this last year, took my son down to Miami to the Orange Bowl,

and hung out with Zach for a day. And he did have some head issues after he got done playing for six months to a year. He was having some different things. And then he says he's been fine ever since. So I was very relieved that he'd been doing well. I wasn't sure, but he's done really, really well. And, you know, obviously he's made a ton of money.

He's got a young family now. He's like, you know, talking to him, you know, he's the classic dad driving his daughter to dance practice. And to think of that now compared to what I saw him as in the early 2000s, where he was just a headhunter out there. It's amazing. Yeah, again, great player. Maybe one of the better defensive players I played with. Definitely the best middle linebacker I played with.

And again, that defense was loaded, and he was the unquestioned leader of that defense. Our next player on your list, every time I've ever watched a Sage Rosenfels start for the Houston Texans, there's something that is in common. You throw the ball to Andre Johnson every play. That is your offensive strategy. In fact, that's probably why you won some games with Houston, is Koob's and throwing to Andre Johnson every play. That is your offensive strategy. In fact, that's probably why you won some games

with Houston is Koob's and throwing to Andre Johnson every play. I don't think people realize that Andre Johnson is 11th all-time in receptions. And think about his quarterbacks. No offense, but you got you, Matt Schaub, David Carr. Was there a yates mixed in i mean it was he's not exactly playing with brett farve throughout his career and is one of the hands down best receivers to ever play and he ended his career uh you know with i think the colts for a cup of coffee maybe for a season and maybe tennessee titans for a little bit too interesting, all in the same division. At that point, his knees were sort of shot. One of the things with Andre, 6'4", 3", 235 pounds. And he legitimately ran in the 4'4", 1", or 4'3", 9". So for a big guy, very fast.

It's hard for big guys like that to put on the brakes. It's just not, you know, it's like an NBA guys. All these guys have bad knees at the end of their career. Well, that's, that happened to Andre. His knees just sort of gave out on him, but because he was so big. And when you would see him take off from his stance, when you'd watch it on film, you could feel the speed and the energy coming down the field. It was like a freight train and he could run past you. He could run on the end cuts, but then you could also throw on the brakes. And when I first got there, he was not a great snagger of the football. I don't know how to describe that, but he wasn't a great, I guess, ball catcher. You know kubiak and kyle shanahan who was a receiver

before he got there they would say you know one of andre's problems is he catches a lot of balls in his chest he's just not super confident in his hands and he really worked on that when i was there with those jugs machines uh you know he'd get 200 balls after every single practice and he became a guy that could just snag the ball out of nowhere. And you would throw balls, you know, just into spaces over the middle. And Andre come rolling in there. He put the ball by 11 feet and he'd go up there and just snag it. Had great hands.

And also had pretty good run after the catch. He was a good blocker. He could put them all over the field. He wasn't just, you know, again, we talked about Ricky Williams with the running back position. Sometimes those guys aren't super dependable of asking to do too many things from a concept standpoint, from a responsibility standpoint. It's like some running backs just give him the ball.

Some receivers, you just want to line them up at X, or you just want to line them up at Z. Don't ask them to do too much because you don't want to overcomplicate. Not Andre. Andre could play X. You could move him to Z. Don't ask them to do too much because you don't want to overcomplicate. Not Andre. Andre could play X. You could move him to Z. You could put him in the slot. Occasionally, Koob's would line them up

as like a second tight end just to sort of hide him or even put him in the backfield in motion mount to see if we couldn't get a matchup on a linebacker or something. You could do all those things with Andre as well. And on top of it, and he's a very quiet guy. He was not a rah-rah guy, which you appreciate.

As we all know, the receivers, the diva mentality of a receiver sometimes, the Odell Beckhams or maybe with Stephon Diggs last year, last couple years, they'd occasionally say something. It'd be sort of annoying, and the coach or the quarterback would have to deal with it. Andre had none of those types of things. He was the quiet guy who was sort of led by example, not by what he said, but by what he did. And he, the way he worked, the way he had his own private workout on Fridays, and we would work on Monday through Thursday, he'd have the Andre Johnson University of Miami workout, which was like at a whole different level on Fridays, it was like, fire, beware, if you show up for that thing, you're probably going to throw up.

So his leadership thing on top of it, much less, you know, when it was game time, he came from that University of Miami, we will, we will do anything possible to win. It's all about winning. It's all about team. He didn't really care, even though he had all about winning. It's all about team. He didn't really care. Even though he had all those stats, he wasn't one of those guys that wanted. He didn't have 12 catches that game. If he had three or four catches and we won, he was thrilled. So he was everything that you want as a wide receiver.

When people ask me who was the best receiver I ever played with, it's unquestionable, Andre Johnson. Now, I didn't play with a lot of other Hall of Fame-type guys, but for me, unquestioned. I mean, Andre, the whole package, so easy to play with. And, yeah, so if you're me and you're a quarterback, of course you're going to throw the ball to Andre Johnson. I mean, he made a lot of quarterbacks look pretty good.

He made Matt Schaub a ton of money. And when Andre's on your team, you want to try to throw him the ball. Before we get back to the conversation, I want to remind you that there is no shortage of action going on right now at our exclusive partners at betonline.ag. Sports are slowly making their way back, and BetOnline is leading the way with the best odds and lines for all UFC, NASCAR, boxing, and soccer matches. And if you need more, they have simulated NFL, NBA, and UFC simulations all day, every day, live on their website.

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maybe you get lucky enough to be a game that it covers a lot of the region at noon on Sunday and you're playing somebody but aside from that I mean if you're not a Houston Texans fan from that era you're probably not seeing it you don't have red zone and even the fantasy you would have looked at you know catches and seen that he was good but never to see his excellence really play out like you would today. And then I think that PFF adds an extra layer to all of these things because we could look at, hey, what's Sage Rosenfels' quarterback rating when targeting Andre Johnson? Oh, my God, it's crazy good.

And we just didn't have that access. So I think that held us back. The people who would be most knowledgeable about andre johnson's excellence are probably madden players because he would always get you know 95 rating on madden you could just you know trade for him because you're not playing with texans sorry yeah you know playing for the texans was interesting you know that afc south they just other than houston uh which is a newer franchise uh and also in the same state as Dallas Cowboys, which is sort of like two strikes against you. But, you know, Jacksonville, small market. National Tennessee, small market, right?

Indianapolis, small market. So you just don't get a ton of national games. I actually, I believe, started the first ever Monday night game for Houston, Texas in 2008. We won versus Jacksonville, I think. I started the Thursday night game wearing all red, looked like a bunch of Kool-Aid men. Lisa Lyman used to say they looked like the Kool-Aid guy.

But yeah, there's not that national exposure, especially back then, sort of pre-Red Zone, pre-NFL Network, all those types of things. But huge market in Houston. Andre's a legend down there, has a great nonprofit. But as a player, phenomenal teammate, phenomenal player, phenomenal specimen as just an athlete, just a sort of freak of nature athlete. But again, mentally had all those attributes that you'd love to have

as a teammate, as a wide receiver. Okay, last one on your list, five best football player teammates that you've ever been around is Eli Manning. And I just want to say that the Eli Manning Hall of Fame debate drives me crazy. Because the second half of his career, he didn't play for very many good teams. His skill set, obviously, as it happens to everybody, was fading during Eli Manning's prime. It's not just like he had two good games.

He's not Nick Fultz, okay? I mean, he was one of the elite quarterbacks during that time for probably a seven or eight-year stretch, where if you had Eli Manning, you felt like every year you could go win the Super Bowl, potentially. And then, when people try to downplay beating Tom Brady in two Super Bowls and being the MVP in both of them, I just don't know how you downplay that. Like that's what you start playing for.

That's what you watch as a fan for is to go win the Super Bowl and to beat the best player of all time twice in the biggest game. I don't think there's any going like, oh, well, if he didn't. It's like, well, he did. He did do it. There's no downplaying how amazing that is. So honestly, you know, I think he does get into the Hall of Fame. I just don't really care for the debate because I think he was, I think we look at, oh, what his overall win-loss record is or what his quarterback rating, but a lot of those stats

are influenced so much by the last couple of years of his career. If he retires after beating Brady the second time, I don't think anybody even questions whether he'd be going into the Hall of Fame. Well, Eli's career is interesting. You know, he comes into the New York Giants 2004. Kurt Warner's the starting quarterback for about two-thirds of that season. Then they, you know, they're sort of, they know that at some point they're going to give it to Eli. And he first starts playing. He's not all that good. Kurt, and Kurt had played well and Eli had had played great um and he ends up in 2007 getting into the Super Bowl getting super hot in the playoffs but if we remember if we go back you know Tom Coughlin was right on the edge of getting fired a couple times uh and they kept him on and yeah win the super bowl

but you know i think they were nine and seven maybe ten and six when they made those runs but he was the guy who would start like the john starks you're the guy that could get really hot and eli got hot at the right time twice uh but he was in this offense kevin gilbride's offense in new york for eli's i Eli's first 10 years in the league was an offense that you just didn't throw the ball to the running backs. They were the last almost every year in running back catches. It was not something they did very often. They loved keeping the running backs in, chipping, helping out the offensive line

so Eli could hold on to the football. Then he had usually two or three receivers going down the field, running all these various option routes. And they sort of ran to green grass and ran to space. There had to be this thing where quarterbacks and receivers truly had to be on the same page all the time. And so it wasn't an offense that had unbelievable timing and get the ball out and those types of things and so you know that type of offense is not conducive to 69 completion percentage just not it's conducive to 59 or 60 percent complete you're trying to throw the ball down the field all the time and you're not just flicking the ball to the running back for a four

yard game they're flat you're trying to push uh the field a lot um but it was really really hard to stop when it was on and he had steve smith hakeem nicks mario manham and he had a you know good set of right amani tumor early on who was about an underrated player amani tumor very good wide receiver for new york giants but eli had to do on of it, we're talking about those running back stand protections. He had to mentally, and this is where he was different than Favre, he did mentally run the entire operation. Favre was great. Give him a play, and he'll find a way to make it work.

Eli is like, give him a play, and there's a very good chance he'll change that play or change the protection or change this or change that or or change the past pattern lead the protection on he was constantly manipulating the defense to get to a better play um and that's that's a lot that's a lot of responsibility for a quarterback so yeah statistically you know he might have like an 86 percent uh uh you know quarterback rating i think mine's like 81 or 82 so you're like oh not even that big of a difference but he was such a good play and he was clutch and now and there's something about playing quarterback for the new york giants kind of like the dallas

cowboys too that just takes an extra weight there's just an added element of pressure of responsibility and i think we all can agree he passed that responsibility test with flying colors over all those years and the toughest media market in the country, lots of scrutiny, and just rarely, rarely, rarely said sort of the wrong thing that caused any sort of turmoil. It's not easy to do. And you might think of him as a bland person in his press conferences. He was anything but that. Really, maybe the smartest quarterback I ever played with. I think he got like a 39 or 40 or something on his wonder lick. You know, those nice private schools in New

Orleans that he was lucky enough to go to. But yeah, he was that football team. He was the offense. Everything went through him. He was just the quarterback that was part of the offense. It really was his offense. And I would say for me, one of the top five guys I played. So do you think he's going to get in the Hall of Fame? Yes, I do think he'll get in the Hall of Fame. I also think Andre Johnson should get in the Hall of Fame. I also think Zach Thomas should get in the Hall of Fame. I really do. But will Eli get in first ballot? Probably not, but it will be interesting. I think a lot of sports writers, there's of course the Manning thing, there's the New York thing. It wasn't some small market. Phillip Rivers and him will always sort of be connected. A lot of

people think Phillip Rivers will get in the Hall of Fame as well, despite not having those playoff runs and those Super Bowls that Eli does have. I think he does get in the Hall of Fame, but I guess we'll have to wait and see. Well, Sage, this was really fun. I'm glad that we decided to do this. You, being a journeyman, had a remarkable journey through the NFL and rubbed elbows with a lot of great players. So I'm glad that we could take the time to break down five in a way that, I don't know, people rarely get to hear.

Literally behind the scenes with Eli Manning and Brett Favre. Very cool stuff. So soon, hopefully we'll start to get into real training camps and have position battles to break down and everything else with the Vikings. But I'm glad that we could take this time in June to talk about some NFL legends thanks for doing it man yeah I was gonna say as if we do get into training camps here and with all the COVID-19 stuff going on you know we may have to really become experts on who's on the practice squad who's on the bottom of the roster it's gonna be interesting here because oh well you know next thing you know

Kirk Cousins is out for two weeks or three weeks or something. So it's going to be a very, very interesting fall in both the NFL and college football. So you're saying we should spend a lot of time on Nate Stanley against Jake Browning in training camp. You know, we might, we might see Nate, Nate Stanley versus whoever the Packers backup quarterback is. And, you know, quarterback is for a game this year. I mean, who knows what's going to happen.

It's got to still be Scott Tolzien. You can't tell me different. It's always Scott Tolzien. All right, Sage. Well, thanks, and we'll get together again very soon. Sounds good. Hey, before we wrap up here on the Purple Insider Podcast, I just want to ask a quick favor to all of you loyal listeners.

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