The Ringer NFL Show - Super Bowl LI's Impact, Four Years Later

Episode Date: June 15, 2021

Kevin and Nora start by discussing all the NFL news from the past week. Then they take a look back at Super Bowl LI and the New England Patriots' incredible comeback victory against the Atlanta Falcons. They decide what was the most rewatchable sequence, what aged the best and worst, greatest what-if, and more. Hosts: Kevin Clark and Nora Princiotti Production Assistant: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The postseason is here and the Ringer NBA show has you covered with real ones, group chat, the answer, and Ringer NBA post game. Check out the Ringer NBA show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. It is the Ringer NFL show, part of the Ringer Podcast Network. I'm Kevin Clark, joined by Noel Prince, Yadine. What's going on? How much, Kevin? I'm excited for this episode.

We're going to relive some fun moments. Relive a game we were both at. It is going to be our second ever NFL rewatchable. So we did it a couple years ago, a maze and I did the Niners against the Seahawks and one of the best NFC championship games of all time. And we're running it back. We're doing the Patriots and the Falcons in Super Bowl 51.

No spoilers. We won't spoil it here. If you haven't seen the game, we'll get to it in the segment. We're going to do some housekeeping first before we get to the Rwatchables. Number one, Nugget here, midweek nugget, Nora. Russell Wilson says he didn't request to trade from the Seahawks. He always wanted to play here for his whole career.

Do you believe him? I do believe him because wasn't that part? part of the, I think the reporting never got to the point of he has requested a trade. I think he was miffed. I think the characterization is he was miffed. Mift. Mift is, I think, is spot on. And I think, I mean, look, smart on, smart on Russell Wilson and his camp and the Seahawks for maintaining some plausible deniability there.

And if it never gets to the point of a trade request, then you can always lean back on the, I never requested a trade. and it kind of sounds like, oh, I was never. None of that mattered. And it was like, no, there was some miffedness. That was real. I think this might be in perpetuity. You know, Pete Carroll was asked about it a couple weeks ago, and he basically said it's old news, water under the bridge, all that stuff.

There's no problem. And, you know, the Seahawks are a team that they find a way to make things run pretty well. I mean, famously, two Seahawks punch each other in the face the week before they won the Super Bowl. There's, they can find some harmony and chaos and this isn't even chaos. And Danny Kelly and I've talked about this a couple of times over the past couple of weeks about just the structure there and how it all works. But I actually think it's okay. And Pete Carroll will be okay with it if every offseason Russell Wilson says, oh, I don't know. We could have improvements. I don't know. They could listen to me more, all that stuff. But then when it comes to minicamp, he's there and all that stuff. And I do think that they probably will listen to him more. I think he will probably get a little more power. the organization. And I think that they're probably more set up for that than the Packers are, quite frankly, at this point. There's probably a whole host of reasons for that. But yeah, it's going to be a fascinating thing to see how sort of the next couple of years operate with that. But I actually do not think it's much of an issue for 2021. Do you? No. You know, it's funny.

It seemed like there was this point when he had made those comments about I'm getting hit too much. I want to get hit less. And that was happening at the same time as we were learning more and more in particular about Aaron Rogers' dissatisfaction and seeing Rogers go out and make news that ended up drawing more attention to his dissatisfaction with the Packers. And it kind of felt like, oh, these players are kind of on parallel tracks. I mean, even Julio Jones to a degree, you know, he certainly made some news that reflected back on his desire to leave the Falcons. Russell Wilson just at that point where it was like

will Russell Wilson be one of these guys who does this that it was just like we never heard from Russell Wilson again until now and now it's like oh it's fine all right let's get to the next sort of disgruntled quarterback corner it's Aaron Rogers so President Mark Murphy of the Packers calls Aaron Rogers a complicated fella

I was just browsing Twitter and I saw that a t-shirt company is selling a t-shirt now with Aaron It's this complicated fella underneath it. Nora, I think Aaron Rogers probably is a complicated fella, but if I was the president of a team that was trying to get him to come back, I probably would not voice those thoughts. Aaron Rogers has read into everything probably a little more than he should for over 15 years now. I mean, there was a 60 Minutes report in 2009 or whatever where his teammates basically said that he

he thinks about things. He over analyzes things sometimes. And I think that if you're the Packers right now and you are trying to repair your relationship with the reigning MVP, who does this sort of thing, who reads into a situation, you know, who reads into a phrase calling you a complicated fellow, I feel like right now you might want to shut it down for a little bit

until he's showed up the training camp or something. As in, you might want to shut it down as in you if you're the Packers, I would not, I would not be commenting on Aaron Rogers. unless it's to say, I love Aaron Rogers and hope he shows up. Yeah, I think you'd comment a little, because if you just don't comment at all, then that can be a perceived slight. Well, most of like Matt Lufur and those guys are like, we want him, we want him here. He's great.

I know, but he likes Matt LaFleurr. If you're Mark Murphy right now, what is the best course of action? Because I don't think, I actually quite, I think Mark Murphy's pretty good at his job. He's good at his job. But I don't think that right now being like he's a complicated fellow is going to help anything. I agree, but I think it's a tough spot. You know why? Because Aaron Rogers is a complicated fella.

It's a trap. It's a trap. You can't call him a complicated fella because he is a complicated fella. And he's going to hear you call him a complicated fellow. And it's going to make things more complicated. And it's complicated fellow mind. All right. Next thing, Stefan Gilmore is not showing up with minicamp.

I do want to say I was looking at mini camp updates a little bit earlier. Henry McKenna, who covers the Patriots. He put a video up and he said, Mac Jones has a nice pump fake. A lot of buzz. A lot of buzz. Henry. I love Henry. Bikahenka. Stefan Gilmore has not shown up to

minicamp. Cam Newton is apparently healthy. He was practicing last week. He'll be taking the lion's share of the reps this week. Worried about Stephanie Gilmore. He wants more money. I think his base salary is something like $7 million for next year. And he's a very good cornerback. So it's not it's not unfathomable that he would deserve more money or be able to find a way to get some holdouts don't typically, you know, not something that patriots have a ton of experience with.

And I think there's been some speculation that he would be a candidate to possibly be traded. That was my next statement is the reason there aren't a lot, have not been a ton of holdouts in Foxborough is because if a guy's going to be really expensive, they have no plans to get him under a manageable deal, they usually end up on another team for a first or second round pick. Yep. Would not be surprised. But I feel like the window for that was last year when it was first rumor. But what do I now?

Yeah. Maybe they should get the package they wanted. Or maybe I would also say kind of going back to the discussion we've had on the Patriots all summer is that it's possible that there was just such a lack of depth in the defense last year after the opt out. It was just like, we got to have something back there. All right. Anything else?

Should we get to it? Let's go. I'm excited. Okay, one of the best games of the last decade, Patriots, Falcons, Sewell-51, here's the Sports Rewatchable. All right, now it's time for, I believe, the second game rewatchables we've done. A couple of years ago, we did Seahawks versus Niners. That was really fun.

Nice trip down memory lane for a game that I felt defined an era. And this defines a different era of football. It's the Falcons and the Patriots. And in many ways, the ramifications of this game are still being felt all over. And one of the reasons we wanted to do this game was because of the Julio Jones trade last week. And just the what ifs that extended. Obviously, the quarterback who won this game, Tom Brady is still winning Super Bowls. Obviously, this game, and there's been some reporting about this that came out later,

this game had some ramifications on sort of the succession plan, Jimmy Garoppel, all that stuff. There's just a lot here. Nora, when you think about this game, so we were both there. but we were sitting in different parts of the stadium and we had different jobs. When you think about this game, the first thing comes into your mind is what? Just like a total

body rush of freak out and oh my God, what the heck is going on? Like, I was an intern for the Boston Globe and I was so, so, so lucky to be at that game in person. I was like, I'd been a summer intern and then I got sort of half hired. Yeah, that happened to me once.

Right. So I didn't have like health insurance or anything, but I was doing the work of a beat reporter because, you know, media. I'm making jokes. I was very lucky to be doing that. I'm very happy to be doing that. But it was the biggest thing I'd ever covered and I was very worried that I was going to pass out on the job. Like there were parts of that fourth quarter where while I was trying to take in every detail that I possibly could, I was just like gripping the table going, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. What if I was trying to take in every detail that I possibly could. I was just like gripping the table going, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. What if I was. I, what if I lose like bodily control of my fingers and can't type and my game story is ruined? That was my experience in this game. I'm sure you were a lovely game story. A couple things. Number one is that the half hiring thing happened to me to while I was in college. But instead of covering a Super Bowl winning team, I covered the one and 15 Cam Cameron Miami Dolphins team, which is probably the worst team I've ever seen play in my entire life. So we had different experiences.

I was a sophomore in college, just chasing around. Chad Pennington or no sorry Cleo Lemon excuse me it was year before Chad Pennington incredible just trying to get those Cleo Lemon quotes I saw Cleo Lemon in a magic game a couple of years ago and we had a nice little reunion it was very nice it was a very

pleasant conversation with Cleo Lemon that's a very special story wait Kevin can I tell you something though I did have the presence of mind I'd totally forgotten about this before we decided to do this I did have the presence of mind after the game when I was with my

my Boston Globe crew, we went down to the field. And I think some of it was just still falling. And there was a bunch of confetti that got into my tote bag. And then I think I grabbed some of it off the turf. And when I came home, I just had all this confetti. And I put it in a little, like, glass jar. And I kept it as a momento. And then I got, like, stuffed in some sort of storage box.

But then I dug it out last night because I was thinking about this game. There was a really famous Florida Florida State game. years ago that everybody rushed the field afterwards and I grabbed a huge chunk of the turf because everybody was doing it and I put it in a bag. I was probably like nine or 10 years old and I used to hang it on my wall and I'd take it down because as I got older everybody thought it was weed. They were like you have just a huge bag of weed on your wall and I'm like no it's from Doe Campbell Stadium. All right. So let's move on. So I've actually never seen the full game broadcast of this. So this was on.

I had it either. Obviously, this game has been on a bunch. It was on during quarantine last year. Actually, Chris Long came on Sun Newsday, and we talked about it a little bit because everyone just did a game watch, including Tom Brady. Tom Brady famously says he gets nervous watching the comeback even now. Like, he wants to win the replays the way Chris Long put it.

Because he's just so, I don't know, so competitive and so juiced or whatever. So I'd never seen the full game broadcast. It's interesting to me that you had the what is going on kind of attitude for this. because I remember thinking, like, even though there were parts of the comeback for the Patriots, that where it wasn't, it wasn't always rowing in one direction. There were missteps there during the, during the comeback, and we're going to get to those. But everything felt like it made sense. And that, that to me is sort of the defining trade of the Patriots dynasty,

is that the miraculous things look normal. And if you watch those plays, everything seemed like there's an order to it. It wasn't just completely outrageous. Like, I think the next year, the Eagles game, the Eagles Super Bowl, had more of a chaotic spirit. Maybe that has to do with the crowd. Like I was thinking about the crowd and, you know, I don't think Patriots fans, and this is just, this is well established.

Patriots fans didn't, you know, the ticket prices and all that stuff weren't as high in the later Patriots dynasties they were at the beginning. And that's, that's just natural. Alabama fans don't travel in as many numbers as they did at the beginning of the Alabama dynasty. And people who were on their eighth, ninth, whatever it is, championship game are not traveling as much. So the atmosphere seemed a little subdued in that regard, maybe the entire week. And so maybe that played into it a little bit. But it's a really, it's a fascinating game to me. And it is probably one of the three or four best games in any sport that I've ever covered.

All right. So let's get into the categories here. And then we'll go with some of some of the offshoots here. Number one, most rewatchable sequence. Well, so I would be surprised if we don't have the same thing here. But what I have is just the last five minutes of the fourth quarter. So that's from the Julio Jones catch to the end of regulation tying sequence for the Patriots because it's just unbelievable. And, you know, I agree with you in the sense that everything that happened in this game made sense. It tracked with a certain type of logic that we've come to ascribe to events that involve the New England Patriots. But that logic only works if it's like you're accepting that the stuff that normally happens in sports movies

is what's just going to happen, right? Like, I think that's why I was like, how can this possibly be real life? Is because this is how you would script it. Because you have that incredible catch by Julio Jones on the sideline where he somehow manages to tap both of his toes inbounds, which just like the feet of body control alone was so remarkable that I know everybody with the Patriots looked at that and the thought was just, oh, my God, not again.

Yeah. Because they had been on the receiving end of amazing catches in the Super Bowl before. And it just felt like, oh my God, there's another one. Not just David Tyree, but Mario Manningham. Mario Manningham is the forgotten amazing catch in the Super Bowl against the Patriots. But I guess Julio is now the more forgotten, but because they lost the game. I kind of feel like it's so forgotten. Everybody brings it up all the time.

Okay. So the Julio catches like the Hes. Mario Manningham is actually the one. Is the actual forgotten. It's the actual forgotten. It's the actual forgotten. The big thing about the Julio catches everyone who is like, don't ever forget about that.

Don't ever forget about that, that catch because it would have been the most amazing catch of all time. But also, what was more impressive athletically? Athletically, I'm sorry, is the wrong word because the Julio one is far and away, the best one. But as far as, Improbability. Is it the Julio catch or the Edelman catch a little bit later? I think improbability-wise, it's the Edelman catch.

Because that was just the thing that's amazing about the Julio catch was that he literally did that with body control. The Edelman catch was amazing because he was flying through the air, which like, you know, I think a lot of people who listen to this podcast have probably spent a fair amount of time watching Julian Edelman. Guys always flying through the air. Flying through the air is just like Julian Edelman's, you know, natural natural, uh, state of being. And it just so happened that he was in the right place. And then what he did with his hands and the focus to get his hands under that ball, it bobbles up slightly. And then he maintains possession before they actually go to the ground. That was incredible. So if you isolated just the hands, maybe the Edelman catch is more physically impressive. But from a full

body perspective, I think Julio, it's just, you know, there's a much lower. Both of those things, it's a 0.000-0-0-0-something percent of people who can do that, but there's more zeros in the Julio one. The Adelman one was just like a wacky, wacky thing that happened. Right. And Robert Alford should have picked off the Edelman catch.

It was resting at one point on the arm of Ricardo Allen. Like the ball was just on Ricardo Allen's arm. So it was completely different. Julio is a much better receiver than Julian Edelman from an athletic standpoint, from just a talent, standpoint, from everything standpoint, even though there's a very strange corner of the internet called Patriots fans to argue that Julian Edelman should be a first ballot hall of famer. We're going to put that aside for a second. All the respect in the world is Julian

Adam. I think he had an amazing career. I think he'd be an awesome pundit, all that stuff, but I'm sorry, I'm sorry to say that to the Patriots fans who might get mad at me. My take on the Julian Edelman thing is that it is amazing and remarkable and should be lauded that a scrappy, not particularly accomplished quarterback from Kent State managed to turn himself into such a viable NFL receiver that we can even have this conversation. And had so many playoff moments that when we do Apex Mountain a little bit later, like there's a legitimate debate between four or five things in the playoffs

that could have been Julian Edelman's Apex Mountain, including the catch here. I mean, he was a Super Bowl MVP at one point. He had that incredible touchdown throw. against the Ravens a few years before that. He had an unbelievable career. He and Julio's catch is just different in this regard. All right.

So I agree with you. I think that what's interesting about the comeback and the first five-minute stuff, excuse me, the last five-minute stuff, go ahead. Can we just finish running through like how much stuff gets packed into that five minutes? So the Julio catch sets up the sequence where the Falcons don't put points on the board. because then they have Matt Ryan gets sacked, then Jake Matthews gets called for holding, and they get out of field goal range,

and that's when the Patriots get the ball back with three and a half minutes left, and you're just like, oh, holy crap, this could actually happen. And then that's when you get the Edelman catch, and that's when, you know, by the way, the broadcast is just cutting to Arthur Blank, like clutching his wife over and over and over again.

And it's just, as far, as five minutes of football clock go, it's like three games worth of drama just in that whole thing. And obviously, overtime is special in its own right. It's the first Super Bowl overtime. But that was kind of like, that was simple. That was like, okay, once they win the coin toss,

this kind of seems like we know how, you know, we've seen this film before, even though we haven't. I had the same note. I was rereading some of my notes from, this game in the moment. And I had said, it said, in my notes, I talked to Duran Harmon after the game. And he said that he told Matt Patricia was drawing up a game plan for overtime. And Dron Harmon went up to him and said, don't, no worries. We're good. We're good here. That's fine. Tom Brady's going to score a touchdown. It's going to be fine. Now, there,

there were some hiccups in that that we can get to. But I agree with you. The last five minutes of this game are amazing. And I guess, you know, the one thing that we're going to, we're laughing about Tom Brady, nervous or whatever watching the replay. I mean, with nine minutes to go, it's, it still seemed impossible. And it just, even now, even though once the comeback started, it all seemed to make sense. There are just things about this game that when you watch it in the moment, you say, okay, well, that's it. That's it. I mean, you even, you even think about the, the Devante Freeman play when they're backed up inside

the 10 before the Julio catch, where he goes on. covered and the Patriots have a defensive breakdown. He goes for like 30 yards. Well, and that had been happening all game, especially as the Falcons got up so big, just the edges. They were able to get there so consistently. And the Patriots had such trouble covering that.

And they'd tightened it up. But then it was just like all over again. It felt like, you know, that actually in some ways struck me more than, like what I remembered was kind of the inevitability once the comeback started was, you know, partially being. like what the fuck is going on, but then also being like, oh my God, the Patriots are a machine.

This is Tom Brady. Like if somebody's going to do it, it's going to be Tom Brady. The thing that I'd sort of forgotten about was that even as, as they were really mounting that comeback, how many times it almost didn't happen? I think that there were probably a lot of times when if you're Arthur Blank or Dan Quinn or Thomas Dimitrov, you probably said, oh my God, thank God, we're safe. Like few. And even when you didn't say that after a play, like if it didn't go in the Falcon's direction. Brady threw some dangerous passes. Like Alfred, I think he must have tipped three balls. A couple of them.

There was one in overtime. I'll just say it right now because it's also one of my greatest what ifs. Vic Beasley could have intercepted, but the play before James White's touchdown, there was a fade route that could have been intercepted by Vic Beasley. He got one hand on it. It would have been an incredibly miraculous play. And what you would beasley would need to have been more turn. a little bit. But the way the ball was thrown,

if you throw the ball a hundred times, it gets picked off a not insignificant amount of times. Yeah, there was another on the, I mean, first of all, just to have the drive that had the Edelman catch that led to the touchdown on the two point conversion that tied it. Brady had to complete a third and ten

to Chris Hogan. There was another one where, you know, he throws over the middle. Alfred just tips it up. And it was like, that was inches away from being a pick. And it's so funny how, like, all of that had totally slipped my mind of just the, like, white knuckling every single play on that drive. A hundred.

That's the weird thing is that afterwards it seemed preordained. And yet, there were a handful of times where it probably shouldn't have been. I mean, even like you look at, there was a Dwight Freeney sack of Tom Brady with eight minutes to go in the first play of the drive. And you probably think the whole thing, the whole thing is gone. And then they, they score touchdown a couple of plays later. It's just the Patriot. This may have been peak Patriots. Tom Brady just doing whatever it took, just making, making place.

Everybody feeling, like, there was one reaction to, I think it was the Edelman catch, where Kyle Van Nuoy was like kind of freaking out a little bit. Yeah, his whole face is just like widening. But one of the funny things about it is that everybody else in the Patriots was just like, yeah, this is kind of what we do. I mean, it kind of reminds me of like Manchester United was always famous for this, where they would always come back, and it just got to be normal. And, you know, I saw a quote the other day from Barry Trots, who's the Islander's coach. And I thought it was really interesting because this whole debate over momentum. And obviously, I think momentum in sports

is overrated just from the media aspect of and how much we attribute to it. But he said, momentum doesn't carry over, but confidence does. And I just, just kind of feel like when you get in these situations and you're the Atlanta Falcons and you're Robert Alford or any of these guys who are making these little tiny mistakes on the back end with five minutes to go and not picking off a pass or or, you know, letting a ball hang on your arm, whatever it is. And these 99% of these things are not, not within your control. But I kind of feel like when one team knows they're going to come back and the other team also knows the other team is going to come back, weird things start to happen.

Yep. And I think there's some of that that happens. You know, we'll definitely get to this. But that's not contained just to the game, right? It seems like it's in some ways contained to what happened to both of these franchises in the aftermath. Yeah. I'd say, I'd say, were you, do you remember talking to Brady afterwards? Yes.

I do too. He was so, he said he was just like, someone asked him to sum it up and he was like, well, a lot of shit happened tonight. Yes, but he also, so I think it was like, there was such a back and forth. Like you can even hear it so far in this conversation that we're having where like part of my experience was that what's going on. I have to throw out this story that I have written,

write a new one. Like, can this be real? And then the other half is sensing this inevitability of, the Patriots doing this. And I think the players felt that too because Brady sobbed on the field after this happened. Like, it was, it seemed very, in a weird way, very normal in certain moments. And in others, just like completely overwhelming and unprecedented and not normal at all. This was supposed to be the last gasp of Brady.

Can we get to our next category? Because I think we're about, about to be there anyway. This was, it was 39 years old and the broadcast, which I thought did a great job. was always just like, oh, hey, it's just pretty good for a 39-year-old. Meanwhile, he's going to win a Super Bowl like a decade later. She's going to keep winning him. Our next category is what's aged the best. So, spoiler alert, it's Tom Brady.

It is Tom Brady. It is Tom Brady. He kills us more hair. All right, so, Tom Brady's my number one. Do you want to get into that before I give my one day? He's won half the Super Bowl since then. He's been to three out of four. four of them and he has more hair.

What else do you need to say? I think that the more hair thing is the most explicable of those, of that group. I could tell you what happened. I can do, but let's be nice. There's a lot of that going around in athletes. I don't know what you're

talking about. Just having more hair as the career goes on. Huh. Fascinating. Just something I've noticed among like maybe if you took the top 50 athletes in the world after age about 35, I would say that about half of them have more hair than they used to. I think Wayne Rooney started it, not to make this a Manchester United podcast, but

Wayne Rooney just had these hair plugs that were so obvious. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding. There's the magic word. He just kind of let it rip. It was a real body positivity moment for athletes. This was like 10 years ago. So whatever. Everyone's doing their own thing.

That's what I say. I would also say, and this is going to wait into the takes area here. After the game, everybody killed Kyle Shanahan. and I think there are things you can probably kill him on. But I think with what age the best, I actually think Kyle Shanahan's legacy. Because, A, obviously, we know how good of a coach he is. But B, looking back on just, just the drive that gave the Patriots the ball back to tie.

Everybody said he should have run the ball more, whatever. First of all, first of all, Tevin Coleman was banged up. Second of all, and that's not the B.O.N. doll here. but second of all, the Patriots were taking away those outside runs for more in the second half. They weren't, they didn't just have the free rushing lanes that they had on the outside runs

at the begin with. But here was a sequence of place. So Freeman is stuffed on a run. Start the series of downs. Tray Flowers gets the sack. And then they cut to Arthur Blank who's holding his wife's hand because he's ready to win a Super Bowl. Then there's a

Jake Matthews holding penalty that knocks them out of field goal range. And first of all, the sack, by the way, it was a 12-yard sack. Like, that's something that I think gets underrated in this.

But they were still in fuel goal range. They were still in fuel goal range. They were still in fuel goal range. So the Jake Matthews penalty. And Chris Long is the guy who drew that penalty. That kind of goes to,

when we talk about roster depth and, you know, I don't really, I'm not a big believer in, in the phrase the Patriot Way or whatever, but getting guys who are really good to be, be depth on your squad is really important.

And to have fresh legs and all that stuff in the fourth quarter, the conditioning that they had, something I've written about a lot. Their ability to keep coming at you in the fourth quarter is so interesting. And Chris Long, being able to draw a penalty like that when the chips are down is part of it all, of the depth of veterans wanting to play for you, of getting smart dudes,

all that stuff. There was, and I'm sure you saw this, there was a missed face mask penalty on Sunoo, on that call, probably should have been offsetting penalties. Joe Buck pointed that out, whatever. And so then there's the incompletion after that, and it's over.

A couple things. Number one, New England had two timeouts at the time they scored to tie it up. So they could have just taken those if you were going to do the just run the ball thing. I guess, I guess the biggest complaint here, and I'm sure we're going to have Falcons fans mad at us or whatever. I'm happy to have a healthy debate here. I guess the biggest thing you could you could kill Shanahan on is is calling past plays

that would then result in a sack and then would result in a holding penalty. But I don't think, I just think with the way the modern game is going, I think passing on the situation is fine. I think if those plays were run in 2020, I think that if they were past plays again, nobody would bat an eye.

I think that the play, I don't think it was a master class in play calling by any means. But I don't think you can pin this on, on Kyle Shanahan. Well, I think you're right about that. I mean, I certainly think that the conversation has evolved to now,

we're spending a lot more time talking about, you know, coaches taking their foot off the gas in the second half of games and committing to just running the ball over and over and not having, you know, not running plays that have the highest expected value added. And to a degree, I think Kyle Shanahan was doing that.

He actually, he told Tim Kawakami of the athletic before the Super Bowl, the 49ers Super Bowl against the Chiefs, the only one of those play calls that he regrets is the one that led to the sack. The Patriots were covering Julio Jones with a combination of Logan Ryan and Eric Rowe, whoever it was usually had safety help over the top. But that was creating a lot of mismatches. So overall, I think he is of the same mind that. you are and the point that you're making that the past plays themselves were not necessarily the problem.

We shouldn't blame Kyle Shanahan. Shocking. I don't know. I think actually Kyle Shannon is perfectly capable of some self-flagellation, but the one that he regrets is the one that led to the sack. And I think that, you know, okay, that was not the one that knocked them out of field goal range, but it was the one on which they lost the most yards.

But I think really what he's saying is just that that was the one, where he felt like it was, whether it was just situational or what he saw with the matchups, the one where a mistake was made. But overall, I think that makes a lot of sense that if that happened, if that happened in, you know, next year's Super Bowl, there probably would be a lot of the same,

what's wrong with you, you're throwing the game away, I can't believe that happened, but there would also be a much louder chorus of, well, actually, Yeah. Those are better priced run. The analytics internet had not developed to a point where everyone was like actually passing in the situation is good.

Right. I will say though that I think the one thing that can't get totally lost here, Kyle Shanahan has been a coach on the two Super Bowl teams that, I believe had the highest win probabilities and ended up losing. And I think that is tough to swallow. Agree there. I would also say Mahomes and Brady are pretty hard dudes to slam the wrong. Totally.

Totally. Pretty hard dudes. That is in no way a one-to-one indictment of Kyle Shanahan as a coach or even his particular decision making. It's just a tough. It's a tough thing that someone can write out in this sentence. Hmm. Can I do one more

What's Age the best? Oh, yes. Well, so, and this is a little bit, I'm maybe bending the category a little bit here. But the sequence before halftime, Josh McDaniels totally got away with one. The Patriots had, I think, first and 10 at the, at the 15.

Yeah, I remember that. They come away with three points instead of seven. There was a second and 15 screen to Martellus Bennett who did not get out of bounds on the play, and that's when they end up having to settle for the field goal. probably one of Josh McDaniels's worst moments in that game and, you know, forgotten to history. So what I'm saying is it has aged very well that that happened because he totally got away with it because it turned into, you know, one of the greatest Super Bowls ever and the greatest comeback in history.

So good for Josh. Did Josh be honest, have a good game in this game? That is a really great question. Yeah. I think overall ledger goes to yes. In particular, the two-point conversion calls were. That's a tough moment and he aced it when he needed to. But the ending does plaster over some rough moments.

All right. I have one minor, what age the worst. And it's not a big deal. And I understand the reflex to do this. But the broadcast kept talking about how, like, young, fast, and athletic the Falcons defense was. And it was a defense that just kind of progressively fell apart in the future years. They actually, like, they were going to develop into, like, you know, the 95 Bulls or something.

And I just don't think that 96 Bulls, excuse me, 95 Bulls were beaten by the Atlanta Magic. The 96 Bulls, it was just kind of funny. There were like five references to, like, how young and great this defense is going to be and how fast they were. And obviously, part of that is Dan Quinn. Part of that is Vic Diesley, just not developing like people thought he was going to. They gave out, unfortunately, for pretty much all involved, they gave out some massive contracts in that defense that ended up costing them a little bit. But this is a defense that went from second and points.

I'm looking at here. It was a defense that ended up not being in the top 20, the last three years, 2018, 2019, and 2020. And just a lot of those guys, I think, starting with Vic Beasley, who obviously is a top 10 pick, there were just some folks that didn't, that didn't pay out on that defense. So I had that, too, for the Atlanta Falcons defense aging the worst. I think in particular, because you can take that very literally, right?

Like, they were a young defense. Last year, I think the Falcons had, it's a little different if you do it, snap adjusted age or whatever, but they had one of the oldest rosters in football. And there was definitely, you can hear it on the broadcast, this idea, that they were maybe going to be this like homegrown Legion of Boom. And particularly in the secondary, they just those players didn't end out.

Aikman said that at one point. He was like, this looks a lot. I just said Collinsworth for Akeman. You can do that, by the way. Any, any analyst, you can just, if you want to do Collinsworth as Akeman or Akeman as Collinsworth or Romo is cut, you can do that. That's fine. Rules are thrown out. But at one point,

Aikman was like this looks a lot like the Seattle team that Dan Quinn had a lot to do with. and spoiler. It did not. It did not look like the Seattle defense. Although some years, some years it does look at the Seattle defense, depending on the Seattle.

I have one more what's aged to the worst. This one is close to home for me. The Boston Globe Snowbird editions of the newspaper. We were printing just a handful. Not a loss. Went to Fort Myers? Yeah.

So there were these newspapers that just went to subscribers. in Florida. There are not very many of them. But they had to go out incredibly early. So on the cover, you know, they have to be honest and say,

the game's not over, but we have to print this newspaper because you want it. So like, we don't know. But it had Brady on his knees after the pick in the second quarter. Robert Alford is running for the end zone

in the shot. The headline says, a bitter end. And below the fold, there's a description that explains that, you know, it's not over, but it is just completely obviously

this, isn't going to happen cover. And I believe that Brady has one framed. That's very nice. Yep. Did not age well. I like that because I as we've both talked about, Brady uses media as motivation in a way that I think probably most people don't. He doesn't he does it privately. You know, like he'll say he'll he'll he will find reasons to to to be mad about things. And way in the way that all the greats do. We just saw 10 episodes of The Last Dance on this. We've seen Aaron Rogers do it.

Like you find the motivation where you can. And for Tom Brady, he tends to use things people say about him. Taylor Swift has a photo of the Kanye interruption moment from the VMAs hanging in her living room in Nashville. Is that a motivation thing or is that just like this was a funny and weird and bad moment in my life? I think it's maybe hopefully it's more of that. But I think it's a little both.

Do you have anything like that? Do you have like a... I can't tell you. Do you keep something around that motivates you? Yeah, Kevin. That's a competitive secret. It's a picture of your face. Yeah.

Yeah, I know. Every day. Just have a large Kevin Clark badhead in my living room. A dartboard? Just trying to... Again, I can't tell you these things. I'm trying to think if I have anything like that. I used to...

The first game I ever covered was a USF-Dapal basketball game. And they spelled my name wrong, which I always thought was really funny. But then that happens no matter where you are in your career, actually. Yeah. Just people, just some random middle manager. I have nothing like that in my life. And that's why I'm not Tom Brady or Taylor Swift. I'm going to, that's my new goal for this week is just to find random slights and just frame them.

Could you imagine if I just told my wife, like, we actually have to get rid of all the art on our walls. We have to get rid of all like the posters commemorating some, some, some, Tate exhibition. We have to get rid of all of those just to get. I got a frame of mean tweets. I got to frame a email from a

editor who didn't give me an internship in 2008, something like that. I like it. I dig through those. All right. Anything else that age the worst? I think the score 28 to 3. I just whenever it comes up,

people always make jokes. And because those games are never this Super Bowl, the team that's winning by 28 to 3 always wins by a lot. Yeah. Well, the 28 to 3 meme online anytime that score comes up for any reason or that sequence of numbers, that's aged poorly.

Half Fast Internet research. Anything stick out to you? I just had one thing from this. So Tony Gonzalez, I guess, was in the elevator going down to the field for the sequence where the Falcons were driving to make it a two-score game and then got moved out of field goal range. And so he gets down, he misses the first two passing plays,

but then he can see the holding call on Jake Matthews. And so he gets down to the field, and he's like, oh, shoot, Falcons are going to lose this game. And then he waited until the Patriots scored, but then when the Patriots won the coin toss, he left.

Wow. That's pretty good. May I ask, How do, you know, you obviously were on the beat for a number of years after this. I'm sure you talked to people, as you alluded to earlier, about this game. How do Patriots, staffers, players, whomever, view this game in kind of the pantheon of great Patriots games? So I think overall it's considered the biggest. It's the one.

Even bigger than Numeruono? Yeah. Okay. Yeah. that said most recollections of like what was going on during the actual game it's actually funny to get some of those guys talking about it because it's not like it's not what you expect at all they were just all so nervous and like losing their minds and everybody will just tell you like if it wasn't somebody

who was a coach on the sideline you know especially a lot of the personnel people who were there with them but not like. like on the field dealing with the actual second to second work of it. Everyone was just pacing. Like, everyone was just pacing back and forth. That's pretty much it. Okay.

So this is, this is the, the meaty part because this might take like nine hours. Greatest what if. So I think from an on, I mean, there's a million on field what ifs. One of them,

as I alluded to earlier, is the fact that Vic Beasley could have in a different universe, intercepted the past in the end zone in overtime. obviously James White doesn't score. That was after the Martellus Bennett pass interference to put it first and goal with the two. I think that, I mean, a first down or a field goal from the Falcons on the second and last drive would have helped. There's just a lot of ways the Falcons could have closed the door. I guess the greatest what if from, well, actually, before we get into the bigger philosophical stuff,

what's your on-field biggest what-if? So we've talked about a little bit with, with the aging stuff. But mine is, what if they had run the ball? What if they'd stayed in field goal range? What if they'd run down the clock a little bit more? What if they'd just, you know, three points? And there's still, you know, the Patriots lose the game, still a comeback. But the Falcons put it out of reach on that drive.

And it never goes to overtime. and that to me is, it's really about, like, what was closest to happening, right? Because it feels like if one of those three plays goes differently, then it almost certainly would have happened. Like Matt Bryant was a great kicker that year. He was. And then everything that happens next has changed. Okay.

So let's get into it. Biggest philosophical what if, if the fact. Falcons win this game. First of all, Thomas Dimitrov is not our guest for the draft week, or NFL show because he's still employed. Dan Quinn is not the defensive coordinator in Dallas because he gets more leeway. Kyle Shanahan is still the coordinator, excuse me, the coach in San Francisco, because if you remember, they were just waiting for them to be out of the, for that

to be named. There was only one candidate. There was only one opening. That was pretty much done. The reason I remember that so vividly is because my wife was looking at wedding venues during this week, but I wasn't a part of it. It was she and her family were looking at it. And then there was only one candidate that I was going to see. And then they used to compare to Kyle Shanahan to the wedding venue because there was only one candidate for the Niners job, but it wasn't official.

Whereas there was only one wedding venue I was going to see when I got home. And I was just like, oh, okay, this is, I'm thinking this is a Kyle Shanahan situation here. I'm being presented one candidate. It's a great venue. a lovely venue. Great venue. Wonderful. The Kyle Shanhan of wedding venues.

Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So, Bill Savically, so many things are different. Do you believe that Tom Brady has the same career trajectory and same timeline with the Patriots, the Jim McGroplo trade, all that stuff? Do you believe it plays out in any way similar if they lose this game and they lose, let's say, whether that's 31 to 10 or even if it was a blowout? How does that change the timeline?

I don't know, but I believe it changes. The reason I don't know is because, and I should just tell our listeners, I can already tell that this is going to be something that I'm just going to bring up, like, on six dozen shows, especially as we begin to talk more and more about player empowerment and quarterback empowerment, which figures to be such a big story. No. And the NFL going forward. Brady waited out his contract.

Brady did not leave the Patriots until he was a free agent. He orchestrated a way to get to free agency and had to wait a long time and be really patient to do that. Because of that, I'm not sure if he doesn't leave at that point. But I do think that everything that happened between this point, this game and then was sort of altered in how it went down and how people viewed their roles and their relations. because of the outcome of this game. And I don't want to, we're going to talk about that a little bit more later, so I don't totally want to spoil it. But I do think that it changes at least some of the internal machinations,

if not the whole outcome. I think if the Patriots got legitimately blown out in this game, I think you look at the Patriots trying to speed up the succession plan and Garoppolo not being traded and maybe even Garoppel potentially being in a competition at some point down the road. I don't know if it was the next year. I don't know. I mean, it's just, I feel like this comeback,

have you seen the first episode of the Loki series? No. So the entire premise of Loki is that he screwed with the timeline in a way, like the Earth's timeline or the whatever, in a way that it was just not acceptable and it was erased by like, he was like arrested by time cops or something. I'm not sure I really got it. But I kind of feel like this in football,

like this game had so many offshoots for what ifs that, that it's it's the loki of of uh of a football because um i think that there are so many different ways that the tom brady jim and groplo bill bellichick thing could have played out um and so i think the whole thing i think the whole thing is is fascinating and i don't think there's a right answer i don't know the only person who i remember someone who's about pat raleigh one time both the only person who knows bill bellichick and bill bellichick's not telling okay and so i i i it's hard for us to speculate although i what i would say is i don't think brady gets gets the the run that he got as unquestioned quarterback in new england and i think jimmy

gropolo's destiny changes a little bit even if by the way that might just be that they hang on to him for another year and and try to franchise tag him or whatever i mean there was just a there was a lot there his contract was expiring um but i don't know i mean it's just it's a it's impossible to say except everything would have been different. There are so many things that would have been different. It's actually hard to nail down what specifically would have been different. Can I give you my hottest retroactive take just because we're kind of talking about it right now? Okay.

So that's another category coming. So the category is, and we're doing right now, hottest retroactive take, parentheses. This is from Bill Simmons email two years ago. One you wish you had at the moment. Here's the take I wish I had in the moment. This will eventually destroy the New England Patriots as we know that. Oh, well, they won a Super Bowl after this. Yes, totally.

They made another Super Bowl and then they won a Super Bowl. Isn't it all worth it? Yes, absolutely all worth it. However, I do point to this game as a really, really important moment in the timeline of kind of like Brady really needing to go somewhere else and really wanting to go somewhere else and orchestrating his way out. And obviously it took a long time in part because he had to do it by getting to free agency, but also because they were so good. And they went back to Super Bowls and they won another one. But I do think that this and a lot of this is coming from Seth Wickersham's reporting.

But in particular, he had that piece, you know, about a year later, a year after this game, about all the fissures that were developing in New England. And a lot of it started right after this game because that's when Brady, I think, you know, sometimes I think people think it's a binary between was Brady this guy who would take harsh criticism and Belichick could, you know, MFM all day long watching film and tell him that the quarterback at Foxborough High could make better throws than he could. And Brady took less money and was just totally about team first, never drew attention to himself or anything. Or it's like he's completely not that guy. when I think in reality, he did a lot of that stuff for a long time. And then after a certain point, I think, and pretty understandably so,

he started feeling like, you know what, I do deserve to be treated a little bit differently than everybody else. Maybe I've done a little bit more than some other players on the team, some other people in this organization. Maybe it's not the most ridiculous thing in the world. world to acknowledge that a little bit. It was the fall after the Super Bowl that his book came out and that he started, you know, there started to be more tension between Alex Guerrero and the team.

The following fall was when Guerrero got banned from the sidelines and had to travel on his own and everything. Alex Guerrero is officially back. Very back. He's extremely on the sidelines in Tampa Bay. He is welcome. I'm sure he's on the plane. I'm sure it's all.

By the way, Alex Guerrero's banning from team travel was not terribly bad. I think he used to get hooked up with if there was an Aston Martin dealership in whatever city they were traveling to. I think Tom Brady's deal with them helped Alex Grero get a loner car once or twice. I'm sure his accommodations were perfectly comfortable. I think he was fine. But yes, very much back in Tampa. what do you need you like you would go to like buffalo for a weekend and get an assin martin yeah two days yeah so how it used to be was that like he could travel with the

patriots he used to have an office that you let's see that seems like too much work to have a to have an as to martin for like two days what are we doing here well that i can't answer all i can say is sometimes it would be like okay the patriots would be staying at some local marriott and then Alex growl would pull up in an asses And it was like, I'm sure you're staying in a much nicer hotel than this. And I'm sure your travel arrangements are fine. One time I was going to Senior Bowl, I landed really late at night in Atlanta airport. And they gave me like a really, really nice Corvette.

And I didn't understand how to drive it. And it was just a very complicated car. And then as soon as they got on the highway, I got stopped. And I was like, oh, man, I must have been going too fast. And I pulled over. It was Georgia PD. And they were like, you know, you're going like 25 miles per hour on the highway. way. I was like, this is good. That was the one time

in a car rental place, getting a sports car and it would be the last. All right. Start working for Tom Brady. But anyway, I think this is actually totally rational, which was just that this was such an unprecedented achievement and such a crazy thing that happened that it did shift in Brady's mind a little bit what his stature should be within the Patriots. And I think that led to more tension than there had been before. So the take I wish I had in the moment was that this game will lead to the destruction of the New England Patriots, albeit after two more Super Bowl appearances and another win. It's funny because the actual take from the Falcon side is the Kyle

Shanahan obviously probably should have been the head coach to the Falcons, but you actually couldn't have that take after the game because Kyle Shanahan was the scapegoat at the time. So that's more of overarching season lesson is that Shanahan, Kyle Shanahan should. be the head coach, but I don't think that's the lesson from the game. That's the hottest retroactive take in Perens, one you wish you had a week after the game, but not in the moment. Or a week before. Best heat check.

I struggled to find a heat check. I think Arthur Blank coming down and being on the sidelines, but that's pretty common for an owner. I think that there's the crafts were still in their box in overtime and all that stuff. But I struggled to see anybody who was just really going for it. Did you find anybody? Well, yeah. So I struggled with this category, too.

The only one that I really wanted to mention, Arthur Blank is a good one. I think that counts, particularly because I believe there was some bedazzling of falcons logos going on. And I think that, like, qualifies you for, for heat check categorization. this fits this category loosely. But Malcolm Mitchell, Patriots receiver. Sure.

Had a huge fourth quarter. And then unfortunately, his career was destroyed by chronic knee injuries. Yes. So this is a little bit of a bummer. But the fourth quarter of Super Bowl 51 for Malcolm Mitchell, like he will always have that. And so hopefully this can be like a celebratory heat check. Well, it's also his Apex Mountain, I would say.

Yes. He's now a children's author. Well, he did that while he was playing. Yeah, but now that's his full-time, it's his full-time gig. All right. Very nice guy. He's also a poet. He had a book club while he was in college, if I remember correctly.

Yep. A bunch of older women in Georgia from what I, when I remember. I think that sounds delightful, by the way. I've talked to him about that. I just think about the older, about just a bunch of 50-year-old women in a book club than Malcolm Mitchell? Yeah. I think that sounds like a lot of fun.

I mean, I'm sure you can join. I'm sure in the Boston area, there are book clubs you can join where there's the group members are older than you. Yeah, but they don't have Malcolm Mitchell. Why don't you investigate that while I investigate weird spiteful things that can put up on our wall?

All right. Macarver Memorial Broadcast complaint. I struggle with this one. Did you have anything? Oh, yeah, I have a lot. Some of them are not real, real strong complaints, though. But so, one, Joe Buck just loves to dunk on punt returners. Every time there's a punt return, he's like, never been a punt return touchdown in the Super Bowl.

And then they do it. And then he's like, still never been a punt return touchdown in the Super Bowl. And it's like, yeah, dude. Like, okay. He also mistook Danny Amadola for Julian Edelman in the first quarter. and then just sort of ran with it. So it's a second and eight. Brady completes the pass and he's like,

Edelman, rather, Amadola. It's Edelman or Amidola. Two little guys. This time it's Edelman. It's not Edelman. But that was a fun one. I really actually overall thought that the broadcast team did a very good job

in this game. I think in particular they crushed it on the Edelman catch because they pretty quickly once they saw like one replay. were confident saying, no, that's a catch. That's definitely a catch. And they still were showing, like they showed Matt Ryan

waving no catch. They gave replays. Yes. Irie catch. And it was just a nice combination of like seeing what was going on all around the stadium. Um, but then also having like, I think sometimes with tough calls when there's more fodder to complain about

broadcast teams, it just feels like they're pretending like, saying whatever it seems like in the moment, but they'll say one thing and then another thing and then another thing. It seemed like these guys waited until they actually were confident it was a catch, but they were able to get there pretty quickly. And that was a huge moment. So I think that's commendable. The only thing about that was that before overtime,

they went back to that drive and they highlighted a quote unquote key play by Danny Amadola, which was the catch. after the Edelman catch, which seemed a little bit strange because it was just much less of a big deal. Another, this is not a, this is not a complaint, but another one was that after the game, Aaron Andrews was interviewing Dan Quinn and both she and Dan Quinn like did a very good job because that's a very difficult, tough moment. You can tell that, you know, Dan Quinn is holding it together, but his eyes are welling up. the interview's good.

She thanks him for doing it. You can tell she means it. It's all very well done. But then as she's walking away, she puts the mic down by her side and probably is assuming that it can't catch any sound. But you can just hear her go, ooh boy.

And it's really good. Wow. I thought Joe Buck was extremely comfortable in this game. I've talked to people who have called the Super Bowl. And I don't think calling the Super Bowl is that much fun because it sounds very stressful. It sounds very stressful as the first thing. It is very stressful from what I gather from these folks. Nobody cares what you say unless it's wrong because most people are just to parties

and the announcers are kind of on background noise. And you're trying to appeal to 100 million people. like if our podcast was listened to by 100 million people, which, you know, I've seen the numbers, we're not that far off. It is. It is. We're not that far off. We'll be there.

We would approach things differently. Right. Or people would get frustrated with us, say snarky things to us, which we would then turn into motivational fodder and or wall art and then become Tom Brady and or Taylor Swift. You'd become, we'd both become different, extremely different podcasters if we found out, like one podcast year for 100 million people.

Yeah, I think that's true. To your point, I don't, so in particular, I felt that rewatching this, they were really, they just seems like they were really in the zone for the end of this game, which like, first of all, no one really cares if you say Julian Edelman instead of Danny Amadola in the first quarter of this game, right? Like this is a category, so we're bringing it up. But you have to be on when the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history is happening, right?

And that's when it seemed like they were really firing on all cylinder there. So it's very impressive. But to your point about like, it's impossible to please everybody. I know Patriots fans really hated that the suspension, that Tom Brady's suspension from the beginning of, this season was brought up at the two-minute warning. If that hadn't happened, everybody else would have been furious. Okay. Do you think the suspension helped Tom Brady? Yes, I do.

And do you think it helped the Patriots because then they were able to get a second round pick for Team of Garoppel. I think it helped the Patriots because their 39-year-old quarterback had four games off and then was playing at an MVP level as soon as he got back. And he was, as Ray Lewis likes to say, pissed off for greatness. Yep. There's a lot there. I'm just saying there's there's a reason.

Obviously, my guess is Tom Brady does, thinks extremely unfavorably of the deflate gate suspension and everything that went through there. Also, I was thinking about this the other day, completely separate from this. Isn't it kind of weird that in the deflate gate thing that they released all of his private emails for some reason? Yeah. That was unbelievable. That was unbelievable. The judge was just like, you know what, as a random offshoot of this case, we're just going to release all of Tom Brady's private emails.

Did you see recently how, I think it was the Washington Post had foiled a bunch of Dr. Fauci's emails and it was hysterical because obviously, like, that's important journalism. It's good to, you know, hold public officials accountable. But clearly, Dr. Anthony Fauci has never said a rude word in his life to anyone. because there was just so obviously nothing in there other than him being like, thank you for sending me the kind note. I bet Tom Brady wishes his emails had been like that. I bet Tom Brady's now just like a big voice notes guy.

Disappear after two minutes. I agree or like Snapchat, a big private Snapchat guy. Do you think Tom Brady has private social media channels for like friends and family? Like Instagram and stuff? Yeah. But I think more, like, I think more than that, I bet he, like, uses signal.

Yeah. Or just doesn't, you know? Like, that's, that's the other thing is, especially if, if you're at a certain level of wealth and having people who work for you around you. Like, you can just avoid some of that stuff. Some of the most, I've heard that when you're just, like, at the super, super duper fame level that, that, that, are a lot of guys who have, I'm talking like the Christiana Ronaldo messy type of level that Brady is at, by the way, Lewis Hamilton, those guys, right, that are that a number of those guys have a phone and basically the only people who will have the number are like six people in your

family. And everybody else has to call like your body guy. Right. Yeah. So that's typically how it's how it's done. But then again, also the other thing I've heard and you probably know this as well, if you're like at the second tier of fame and you actually have a working phone that you actually have to have, that you have to change your number like every six months. Yep. I'm trying to think of like a second level of fame. Like, like Chauncey Billups, right? Like, like famous enough to where everybody who would get your number would share it,

but not so famous that you can't, you're not above a cell phone. Well, right. But then I think the other thing that happens is that. these guys get to a certain level, their numbers starts getting, you know, shared right and left. Yeah. So they start getting overwhelmed with messages and notifications and everything. Then all the first thing that happens is all the notification settings change.

But then all of a sudden, your phone really isn't serving the normal purpose of a phone, right? Because things aren't getting to you immediately. And the immediacy is why we use phones. Right. And then all of a sudden it's like, well, what's the point of this thing anyway? And then you just get rid of it. Yes.

I'm trying to think who else in a second. Like Philip Rivers probably has to change his cell phone name all the time because he's just famous enough for people who get his phone number would share it as gossip. I actually, this is going to be a weird thing to say. I think Philip Rivers keeps his cell phone. I don't know this from... You think he's got it constantly? Or you get you have a private and public. There's another number of people that too.

It's just like, here's my number that I give out to people for business meetings. And then here's and then just keep it in a room somewhere. Well, that's why sometimes people like that, like, they'll respond to your text or your calls or whatever, like three days later. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And it's weird because it's like, how do you, like, they just have different experiences using cell phones than we do. Completely agree. Like, if I respond to a text three days later, I'll be like, oh, sorry, I was like in the shower, but it's, I'm full of shit. Yeah, no, that's my, if you get a text from me three days later, you can go ahead and read into that one. You know, I might, I might try to come up with something and be like, oh man. Like right now, right now it's actually the one time because I'm moving that like if you do get a text from me three days later like that I actually legitimate there might be a legitimate reason. But I'd say 99% of time. If you don't get a text back within 24 hours, I'd go ahead and read into that. All right. Apex Mountain. James White, A. A. Number one here only because I don't think James White has any other any other candidates here. There's no other. Julian Edelman there's a legitimate debate. Tom Brady. There's certainly a legitimate debate.

I would say James White is number one. Who's your number one here? Well, so James White was also my number one. Moses Cabrera, Patriots head strength. His head strength coach, yes. In his first season, there's the whole narrative coming out of this game about the Patriots superior conditioning being the reason that they were able to make the comeback. Also, that season, they had the fewest players in the NFL placed on injured reserve.

So I think pretty safe to say, Moses Cabrera. at Apex Mountain. Wow, that's a good one. We talked about Malcolm Mitchell. Yes. Is Martellus Bennett? Martellis Bennett drawing the past interference at led of the game winning touchdown? Yeah, and also, I mean, look, this was his third

best season by total yardage, best by catch rate, and he won the Super Bowl filling in for Gronk. Like, Yeah. Apex Mountain stuff right there. Um, hmm. Okay, so I think there's a case to be made that just in general,

general. You know, I think Julio peaked this year, but obviously he only had 87 yards in the in the Super Bowl. They lost. The catch was amazing. But I would also say just as far as Canada's he goes here, I think Julio is interesting because there were a handful of plays. There was a Taylor Gabriel reception in the first quarter where the replay was not of the reception. It was of Troy Aikman was pointing out how much the defense was giving attention to Julio and the fact that that not only was Kyle Van Noye tracking him, but I think there were two safeties on him one point that opened up the field for Gabriel.

So I don't think this is the best game that Julio Jones ever played. I'm just saying that from a national perspective as far as broadcaster's saying, and this Julio Jones, he's amazing. Listen, he had 180 yards the week before against Green Day. So he played an objectively statistically better game then. But he was thrown at four times in this game. He had four receptions, 87 yards. He's amazing.

The fact that they lost was not. his fault. There's a case to be made here that this may have been Julio's just from a fame standpoint. This may have been his apex. I think that's right. Anybody else?

All right. Well, Tom Brady. Let's talk about it. Okay. So this is a great debate. There's nothing earlier that I think counts. Maybe, and I'm trying to figure out if there's recency bias or something

I'd play here in my head. But I feel like, I think that Tom Brady has accomplished too many, like, specific things

for it to be something specific. It's about the peaks in the narrative around Tom Brady. And I think arguably the peaks are this game,

this comeback, or winning a Super Bowl in a first year with a different team. I think it's Tampa. You think it's Tampa? I think it's Tampa. I think that going outside of the Patriots system and how much he defined that.

He is the best quarterback of all time. And Bill Belichick is the best coach of all time. And the fact that they found each other is just kind of football destiny, right? And the same way Andy Reed and Patrick Mahomes finding each other seems like it was kind of written. in the football stars. But to leave at age 43, 42, 43, and say he played last year at age 43, he left when he was 42. And to take a, I saw a tweet that was so funny when viral around at the time. And I know there's more nuance to it because they had a stacked roster and they had a fast defense and all that stuff.

But there was a tweet that went viral that says something like Tom Brady really looked at a random team and said, you all want to go to the Super Bowl? Like, that is kind of what he did. It's kind of what happened. And I just think that when you get away from the Patriots infrastructure and all that stuff, which had, no doubt, helped Brady over his career, but he propped it up as much as, as as vice versa. I think that that made a statement that most people, I didn't, I didn't see that particular thing

coming. I think Tom Brady would have won a bunch of Super Bowls, no matter what team he played on, no matter what team he was drafted on all that stuff. He wouldn't have won as many. He hadn't been with Bill Belichick. But listen, there were coaches. If he had gone to, you know, obviously he's a different dude, but if he had gone to the Eagles and played with Andy Reid, it would have been, there would have been Super Bowls. I mean, there were just a lot of ways his career could have turned out really well. But to be 42 or 43 years old and to make this run, that to me is more impressive than the than this particular game as far as narratives go as far as just how stunning something was or how amazing something was this is number one but i'm talking about

accomplishments and i'm going with a single game it would be the last super i think the counter argument that i would make and and i i see the argument for both he was a better quarterback at this point absolutely he was playing in that super bowl absolutely but but you You get graded on a curve when you're 43 years old. Yes. Yes. And so I think you can argue it either way. It's like Phil Mickelson just winning the PGA last month.

You know, some mountains have multiple peaks. I know. Breckenridge. I'm, you're the ski person here. Tom Brady is Breckenridge. All right. I'm cut off.

Does Breckenridge have multiple? Multiple peaks. Famously lots of peaks. It's actually 10 peaks. You can only ski on. Five or six of them or six? How many of you skied all six? Um, is it six or isn't five?

I've, I have skied on all of them. Wow. But you don't, you can traverse. Just constantly apexing. Just, there's so much to choose from.

Highest functional chairlift in the United States. All right. Anyway, I'm done. Funniest promo. Um, wait, sorry,

I have other apexes. Oh, wow. Lady Gaga. This is like, this is like, Everest. Like everyone just said the summit.

There's a huge line of people apexing right now. It's one of those viral photographs. Did this turn into a podcast about mountains? There's like 50 people waiting to summit. Yep. Yep. Yep.

They're stressing the poor Sherpas. Lady Gaga. I say no. Absolutely not. But I feel like you paid more attention to a star is born than you did. I was at this game. I actually did go to the press conference, which I normally do on Thursday or Friday whenever it was. And I did find Lady Gaga to be quite charming.

She did the thing that everybody who's a public figure should do, which is say the question askers name back to them. Name. Huge thing. Huge thing. Yeah. I think Sean McVeigh is the best at that. I've told the story before, but there was a coach who was under fire in the last couple of years. and I heard that the PR guy for this team called a national journalist and said,

can you help me get this, the narrative changed about this guy? And the guy was like, the first thing you should do is say, is just say the reporter's names constantly. And it's like, it's a cheat code for reporters to like you. And the guy, he did turn it around quite a bit, quite a bit. And that we will remain anonymous. All right. keep going with your apexes.

There's no way to play to Gaga. The two point conversion. A two point conversion has had never, well, actually, I should qualify this. The pro football reference data only goes back to 1994. Never tied a Super Bowl before. And the list of games with, the list of playoff games with two successful ones,

pretty short. So, wow. A couple of things here. Number one, this is a ratio of all of the great two-point conversions in college football. Tom Osborne famously went for it against Miami and the Orange Bowl. Did not get it. Miami won their first national championship. I believe the game of the century.

That's a two-point non-conversion. Texas used it to win the game of the century in the 60s, if I'm not mistaken. There's a lot, there are a lot of two-point conversions in college football. What the problem is, is that when you open it up to a specific football thing, it's all, It's all levels of football. I don't know that those were the rules that we agreed to play by. But that's fine. That's fine.

I'll take... You just said Lady Gaga. No, I... There's a whole universe. I completely disagree. This was... This was... This was Gaga post-Jowann.

I do not believe this is Peak Lady Gaga. But I wanted to open it to the floor for discussion. Because it was a great halftime show. You know what I think is underrated about this halftime show? Gaga did that show. without any crazy, like, medley's mashups or bringing anybody random out on stage with her. No gimmicks.

This was a no gimmick half-time show. Coldplay only did that because they correctly surmised that nobody liked them. Cool play got a bad rap. Didn't they bring Beyonce on? Yes. Everybody brings somebody on, usually. But not Gaga.

She just jumped off the roof. But Coldplay, I feel like understood that Beyonce was. would improve their halftime performance. Yes, but Gaga didn't need that. So it's a show of the power of Gaga. If you were to include one Gaga person, could you have improved that show with a second person?

I don't know. Sometimes I think you want pure, unfiltered Gaga. My only complaint, towards the end of the show, they do telephone. She had some sort of like silvery scepter, and they broke off a piece of it, and she held it up to her ear like it's a telephone. This is the Super Bowl.

We can't get Gaga a real phone or a real prop phone? It was better than Justin Timberlake a year later. I'll say that. Yeah, that's true. All right. Next one. Funniest promo. So the version that I watched is on YouTube and didn't have that many promos.

Okay. Mine might have been similar. I watched the, just the one that's on Game. game pass. The one that really, I don't know if this quite counts as a promo, but it was sponsor money, so I think it does. The Alpha Romeo halftime report. Oh, wow. Hysterical. This is, this was one of those things where I, it, I've watched snippets of the broadcast of this game over the years when it's just been on TV and I've like gone in watch chunk or watched the ending or whatever, but I'd never sat down and watched the whole thing. So it, it missed me. When they got to that point and they were like, coming up,

the Alpha Romeo halftime report. First of all, my brain just goes, what? Sorry, though, what now? It was so weird to me, so I looked it up. So Alpha Romeo was making a big push into the U.S. market, and they used basically all of their marketing budget on sponsoring sports halftime shows. So it led to just a lot of unintentional comedy where...

And then Genesis came in and did the same thing. Well, but, right. But at least they had a gimmick where they would have, like, some singer that nobody's McClemore. It was. Was it Maclemore?

It was doing all. Maclemore played like six straight NFC championship games when they were in Seattle because he just wanted to go to the game.

Yeah. But the Alfa Romeo thing was very funny because there was a lot of unintentional comedy where analysts would make car metaphors during the halftime report

that obviously did not involve Alfa Romeo because that's not what anyone's going to think of. So there are some really good YouTube compilations of hearing, like, welcome to the Alpha Romeo halftime report. And then, like, Jay Williams is like, Duke and Grace and Allen are kind of like a Ferrari, don't you think? And it's like, uh, but anyway, it didn't. So the marketing push did not work at all.

Alpha Romeo never got beyond like a tenth of a percentage point in US market share. And then they dramatically scaled back their output. So not a particularly successful. endeavor. Tough one. All right. Next one is best unintentional comedy moment. Mine is, first of all, anything Legerat Blunt does is funny. So that's a little bit of a cheat code for this. But after the game, Tom Brady is is on his knees on the turf, sobbing. And then Alex Guerrero, the aforementioned, best friend godfather of one of Brady's kids is like they're talking to him. The other person who gets in on that moment is LaGarrett Blunt. And I think that is

spectacular. So they just hug it out. And it's like Tom Brady and his best friend Alex Guerrero and also LaGarrett Blunt. Wow. Do you think that that's the kind of thing where obviously Blunt had been in and out on and off the roster, on and off a couple of rosters. He'd had some off the field problems. I remember vividly that year he was living at the hotel on the Patriots campus there, because I remember staying there and I would go and get a Caesar salad every night while I worked and there would be like Garrett Blunt also hanging out in the lobby. Is it possible that Brady took him under his wing a little bit?

Now it was an emotional moment there. It's been known to do that. Now, that's entirely possible in a big picture sense. If you watch the post game, Tom Brady had absolutely nothing. to do with Ligarit Blunt, like, working his way into that circle. Beautiful. Beautiful. That's exactly what I won from Ligarop Blunt.

Brady is holding his face in his hands. There are a lot of tears. Like, he's not, he's trying to, like, block everybody out. And Ligarup Blunt just goes, I am the person he needs. And I love that so much. I love Lagera Blunt. That almost sounds like a heat check. Yeah, that could be a heat check.

Robert Kraft whiffed on a handful of high fives. Yes. I kind of feel like that. That was also spectacular. That could be. All right. Unanswerable questions. This is a good one.

What do you got? If the Falcons had a hill, like the hill the Patriots have that they have to run up and down all the time. Do they win this game? If they had better conditioning is what you're asking. Yeah. They do have a hill in Flowery Branch. But I think the fans are on it all the time.

Okay. So if the Falcons didn't have fans on the hill, did the Falcons fans cost them the Super Bowl by taking up all the space on the hill. It's a great question. That's a great question. I mean, we already got to it in the one-ifs. What happens to Jimmy Garoppolo and the Niners and anything else?

I mean, it is kind of weird that the two big forces on the sidelines, Jimmy Garoppolo and Kyle Shanahan ended up becoming a package and almost becoming very close to winning a silver bowl. and losing it in not a similar way, but not a dissimilar way from what happened here. Obviously, the volume of the comeback wasn't as big. There's a lot of unanswerable questions here. So it's interesting.

Can I give you another one? Yeah. If this game had been normal, even if it had the same outcome, even if the Patriots win, the Falcons lose, but if it just hadn't been the greatest comeback in Super Bowl history, do the Falcons have a different trajectory?

basically what I'm asking is was there enough just bad juju from this that it had an impact beyond you lose a great play caller in Kyle Shanahan players get older some of those young guys didn't turn out to be as good as their draft status and and the expectations that were on them or is it just or not just but is a significant part of this that dealing with something like that the aftermath of it is is genuinely really hard for a team okay so that's an interesting question because it comes so I think the Falcons were generally a stable organization. Matt Ryan comes into the NFL. Media League makes the playoffs.

He over a three years period from 2010 to 2012 goes, loses in the divisional round on a 13 win team, losing the wildcard 10 win team, and then loses in the conference championship game to the C-Ox. And that was a nice little run there. That was under Mike Smith. Mike Smith gets fired. Dan Quinn takes over.

And they lose the Super Bowl. And then the next year they lose in the division. round. I remember having this feeling going in the next season. I'm sure you had this feeling as well that the 2017 Falcons were a D-A. That there was, even though I think this is, it's not just losing Kyle Shanahan. It's just that they had taken it so hard. And you can't not take it hard. You can't not take it hard. Like I just put up a 12-year anniversary tweet of the magic losing in the finals. And there were only two games the magic should have won in that series. They, I'm see, they won, and there were two other games that they should have won,

probably should have gone seven, the better team won and all that stuff. I'm not going to relitigate that stuff. But getting almost apexing and not apexing is a really terrible feeling. And listen, by the way, surprise, I don't even play for the magic. I'm not even the coach. I'm just an idiot who grew up a couple miles away from the arena who really likes the team. And so to have some, be someone like Thomas Dimitrov or Dan Quinn or Matt Ryan. and know that there was a moment that you were completely convinced your life was going to change forever.

And it didn't. That's a hard pill to swallow. And I think it takes one year to get over. And in football, those windows can be very, very short. And I think the hardest thing to do is to get better after a loss like that. And I just think that there was no way that that team was equipped to do that. Yeah. So that's really interesting because,

This is something that I think about in hindsight. I actually kind of thought that they could do it. Like there was something very naive in me that was like, I remember reading stuff the training camp after that about, you know, the attack that they were taking was to just talk about it to not make it this taboo thing. Yeah. They did a media tour in New York. Yeah.

And it was just like, it's fine. We're not going to pretend it didn't happen. We're not going to act like it's this untouchable subject. And I remember thinking, okay. Like, yeah. I mean, maybe that seems like the right way to go about it. Maybe it won't have such a, there won't be such a hangover from it. And I don't, I think that is the right way to go about it.

I just think it's way harder than that. And so I think I feel that way in hindsight, but in the moment I felt very differently. Maybe not very differently, but at least a little bit like, I don't know. It's just, they still made it to the Super Bowl. It's a good roster. And it was just not the case. Final category. Who won the game?

Tom Brady. Tom Brady. How much else to say about that one. All right. Thanks for joining us. This has been a very special NFL rewatchables. Hopefully we can do this next summer as well. There's a lot of games to get to.

Keep it here on this feed for Flying Coach, which will be up on Wednesday, Peter Schrager, Sean McVey, and a special guest. This episode has made possible of production assistant Isaiah Blakely with additional production by Arjuna Ram Capone. It's been the NFL show on the Ringer Podcast Network.