Ryan Clark Weighs In On Is Patrick Mahomes Still The Best NFL QB?

Tom Brady wasn't Tom Brady when that dynasty started. Bill Belichick and that 20-year run in New England, it doesn't matter who his quarterback was, it can't go understated what he was able to accomplish. We sort of underestimated not just how much Tom Brady means, but how much a quarterback means. Man, he didn't change the way he coached. He didn't figure out some magical way to win Super Bowls. He got a quarterback that could take him there, but it started because Bill Belichick could in front of his team, say things to Tom Brady, coach him hard, demand things from him, and then it now made Tom Brady that guy that was the voice in the entire locker room. What's up everybody, and welcome to another episode of Network. On this week's show, I'm going to sit down with Ryan Clark, and I'm also going to talk a bit about coach Bill Belichick. Some things I've been thinking after watching the first three games at the University of North Carolina. So please subscribe to Boardroom and Yahoo Sports, or listen to the show at wherever you listen to your podcasts. Welcome to my network. So today I want to talk about coach Bill Belichick. Why do I want to talk about coach Bill Belichick? Because after watching his first three games at the University of North Carolina, I've started thinking that maybe we have to look at his career a bit differently. Now I'm not saying I don't think he's one of the greatest coaches of all time. He's obviously one. He's won six Super Bowls, two Super Bowls as defensive coordinator with the Giants. But I do think we have to look at his career a bit differently. Why? Because there was a time when he was in New England, and the conversation was, is it Brady? Is it Belichick? Is it Brady? Is it Belichick? And obviously, it had to be both. Quarterback needs a great coach. Coach needs a great quarterback to be successful, especially to win six Super Bowls. But when Brady left, he went on to win a Super Bowl with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And Belichick, well, he struggled in New England. That's just a fact. And even the one year that Brady got hurt, and Belichick coached a pretty good season, 11-5 with Matt Castle at quarterback, they didn't make the playoffs. But with Brady, they won six Super Bowls. And as soon as Brady left, he won a Super Bowl in Tampa. Now Bill Belichick coached in Cleveland. I think we all know that was not a successful run. He was, as I said earlier, an incredible coordinator with my New York Giants. And the players that played for him said he was a genius. And he is a genius. X's and O's is part of being an incredible coach. But is he absolutely an incredible leader, somebody that can lead any team to the championship? I don't know, because he's only done it with Tom Brady. Now, is he one of the greatest coaches of all time? Sure. But he's mentioned as the greatest coach of all time. I don't know if you can say that anymore. Now, there's coaches that have coached many different quarterbacks. Joe Gibbs, for instance, all the way back in the day, he coached just three Super Bowls with three different quarterbacks. Even Bill Parcells, who I'm not saying is the greatest coach of all time, won two Super Bowls with the Giants, took the Patriots to a Super Bowl, took the Jets, the New York Jets, to the AFC Championship game, and even coached Dallas to a few successful seasons. And if Tony Romo doesn't fumble that snap, who knows if the Cowboys go a bit further that year? So I'm just saying that whatever he does at North Carolina, I don't think really is going to impact the conversation. Obviously, if he goes and wins a national championship, I think that will be cool. College football is different now because you can pay for players and get a great team, but he'll still have to lead them. Players will still have to want to play for him. So that would mean something. But Brady going to win a Super Bowl in Tampa Bay and Belichick never winning in Cleveland, never winning when Brady wasn't there, does take a bit away from his greatness. So the way I see it is he'll always be in the conversation. I don't know if he's on the Mount Rushmore, though. I just think it's taken a bit away from his greatness. Just some thoughts I had on coach Belichick. My guest today is somebody who's become one of the most prominent voices of this generation. You may see him on his own show, Pivot, or you may see him on ESPN almost every day talking football. Please welcome to my show, the one and only Ryan Clark. Ryan, welcome to the network. I appreciate it, man. Thank you. Of course. So obviously, I've got you on the show. We've got to talk football. Do you ever get sick of talking football? No, I don't, man. I get sick of talking football in spaces where I'm not there to talk football. If I'm in a position where I'm thinking to myself, I'm just about to catch this flight or I'm just trying to eat this food, yeah, I don't want to talk football with those folks. I had a dude walk up to me in the airport and he was like, hey, man, excuse me. And I was on the phone. I said, yeah, man, what you need? He goes, I just came over here to debate you. I'm not talking to that guy. But when it's people like you, man, and when it's part of the job and when it's folks that love the game and that are respectful, I love talking about football. And so it's given me my entire life. So I never mind it. Yeah, no, I get it. And to be fair, though, we'll have more conversations. And at this point in your career, you've shown that you really can talk about anything in such an incredible way. And you've really become a voice around conversations that go far deeper and broader than football. But it is football season and I'm in the spirit. So I'm going to take advantage of it. And, you know, my monologue before you came on today was about Bill Belichick. It isn't spoken about very much. But at one point they talked about whether the Patriots run was Brady or Belichick, Brady or Belichick. And obviously you needed both. But now a few years after the fact, Brady went on to win a championship in Tampa and Belichick has struggled. And then if you look back at early in his career, he really never won as a head coach. So it just makes me think, is there a thought that maybe as a head coach, he's not really one of those top two, three, four guys? No, I don't think that that's what it means. What I do think, Rich, is that we sort of underestimated not just how much Tom Brady means, but how much a quarterback means. I mean, look at Andy Reid. Think about like the trajectory of his career. He was great in Philadelphia. I mean, he won with many different quarterbacks. He was obviously great with Donovan McNabb going to four NFC championships, but he never got that Super Bowl. And then you get to Kansas City and there's the debacle in Indianapolis when you're up big. And you go and draft Patrick Mahomes while you have Alex Smith. And now since Patrick Mahomes has been the quarterback, they've been to every AFC championship since. They've been to five Super Bowls. They've won three of them. Just having that guy change the way we look at Andy Reid, right? Andy Reid is now one of the greatest coaches of all time. And he didn't change the way he coached. He didn't figure out some magical way to win Super Bowls. He got a quarterback that could take him there. And you got to have the foundation. You got to be smart enough as a coach. You got to have the X's and O's. You got to have the leadership qualities, the ability to delegate, the ability to compartmentalize, to organize. But you also need that dude at that position. And I think that's what is more to be talked about. Who Tom Brady truly was, the way he played, the position. Because remember, the year before he went to Tampa Bay, they had all the pieces in place. Jameis just had the first actual 30 for 30, where he threw 33 touchdowns, but 30 interceptions, 5,000 yards. And then you got Tom Brady in there and they found a way to go win it. I don't think it in any way takes away from what Bill Belichick has accomplished. I think it more so highlights how important having that dude at that position is. Yeah, but now I'm starting to think about what you have to judge a coach then by, right? Because quarterbacks especially, or players especially throughout sports, you judge them on championships to some degree. So Brady clearly now is undeniably the greatest quarterback of all time. I start thinking about someone like Parcells. I've been watching the Cowboys' doc, right? And then I looked at Parcells' body of work as a Giant fan. So he won two in New York. He never won again, but he did take the Jets to the AFC Championship game. He took the Patriots to a Super Bowl. And then he took the Cowboys to the playoffs. He didn't have a great run with Dallas. But is a great coach, is a historic coach somebody that's got to be able to win over a long period of time with different players? Or is it the same thing? Is it about Super Bowls? Because I look at someone like Mike Tomlin, who's won one, right? But I've heard you talk about it at length. I mean, he's, to me, one of the greatest coaches in football history. Yeah, like Mike T, right? Mike T goes into the era conversation, right? So you start to talk about who are the greatest coaches of this era. And then obviously I think Andy Reid right now has put himself above the active coaches in the NFL. Bill Belichick, in that 20-year run in New England, it doesn't matter who his quarterback was. It can't go understated what he was able to accomplish. And you also have to remember Tom Brady wasn't Tom Brady when that dynasty started. He grew into that dominant player. But yeah, Coach Tomlin, like really think about his career. He wins a Super Bowl extremely early. He goes to two Super Bowls in a three-year span. And then he doesn't find his way there. Ben Roethlisberger on the end of his career, those last two years, wasn't the same type of quarterback. And then now you're playing with Kenny Pickett, and you're playing with Mitchell Trubisky, and you're playing with Mason Rudolph and Duck Hodges, and the list goes on and on. It's difficult to win the entire thing like that. But let's talk about somebody different. Think about John Harbaugh, right? Who I believe is a very good coach, who's also a Super Bowl winning coach with Joe Flacco. He has arguably the best player in football, right? When you're talking about Lamar Jackson, you're talking about him in conversations with Josh Allen, conversations with Patrick Mahomes. They haven't even been to a Super Bowl together. It just tells you how difficult it is to get there, man. So I think it's different ways to define what a great coach is. It isn't just about winning Super Bowls. It is about longevity. It's about getting teams to overachieve. And I believe when you speak of Bill Parcells, you speak of Mike Tomlin, those are the sort of coaches that you watch squeeze things out of situations where those teams and those rosters may have not been as good as they ended up seeming when you looked at the final record of what they were able to accomplish. Yeah. And I think, you know, we can move on from Belichick. Because if you listen to my monologue and now we're 10 minutes in here, people are going to be tired of me ranting on Bill Belichick. But I will say though, it makes you realize what an incredible leader Tom Brady was. Because I think that there's elements to being an incredible coach that need the X's and O's. And there's elements about how to manage personalities and manage a group of men, right? And lead them into success. And I think that Belichick may have some flaws when it comes potentially to leading a group to success. And we haven't seen him do that without Tom Brady. That's just the fact. Well, I think you know this better than anybody. If you run a company, you're not often going to be able to touch all of the people. Right? You can talk to the managers or you can talk to the coordinators. But you're not necessarily talking to every player. You're not necessarily talking to every assistant all the time. So you need people that can also communicate your message throughout locker rooms, throughout individual meeting rooms. And when you got a Tom Brady, that message is clear. The message is clear because you can hold him accountable. He's the best player in the game. He's the best player on the team. And by holding him accountable, you now empower Tom Brady to hold other people accountable by the level in which he works, by the level in which he finds ways to produce. And so then, like I remember, and I tell it's a quick story. I know we want to get off of Belichick. My last year in the league, I was in Washington and we had joint practices with the New England Patriots. Listen, I'm a Pittsburgh Steeler. Tom Brady absolutely killed us, destroyed us every time we played. And I remember calling Troy Palomalu and being like, hey man, I just got to admit it. Like I really love Tom Brady. I got a chance to talk to him. I got a chance to watch him work. And there was a receiver who ran a route two yards short and one on ones. And Tom Brady walked all the way over to him and they had an entire conversation about why those two yards are important, how those two yards need to be ran and the way that they were going to connect because he did the right thing because Tom was going to make sure he did the right thing. And it's that level of accountability to himself, but also the way he held his teammates to that level of excellence that I think was more the Patriot way than anything. But it started because Bill Belichick could in front of his team, say things to Tom Brady, coach him hard, demand things from him. And then it now made Tom Brady that guy that was the voice in the entire locker room. That's a good way of looking at it. It makes me think a bit about like my perspective on coach Belichick, because I think ultimately bringing the best out of Brady was one of his most important jobs and he definitely delivered on that. You talked, I heard you talking about generational talent in a similar way, in similar conversation. It's something, you know, everyone talks about like amongst their friends, right? It's a great conversation to have when you're debating something and you think about players that could succeed in any era. And I liked your whole breakdown of what a generational talent was in the way that you looked at it. Because when you explain the different quarterbacks from that perspective, Peyton Manning checked the box of generational talent. But then with that same lens, would Tom Brady have been successful in every era of football? You know what's so hard about that? It's hard to say that the greatest player of all time couldn't have been. And I mean, when you go back and you watch Joe Montana, right? Who before Tom Brady was sort of the depiction, right? The definition of excellence and success at that position. Like Joe wasn't running around people and he wasn't super athletic. He didn't have this cannon arm. You know, he wasn't John Elway, but he found ways to be successful. He was extremely clutch. He was able to anticipate, able to play. So I do believe that Tom Brady can play in any era. I don't know if Tom Brady would have been this man in any era. I don't know if he turns into what he turns into without learning some of those things he did learn from Bill Belichick early on in his career. And the way I kind of put it was like Aaron Rodgers to me, when we talk about the generational talents of our era, right? The 2000s, right? The millennium. Aaron Rodgers is that generational talent to me. Yeah. Because we would play Tom bro and Tom would pick us apart and Tom knew exactly where the blitz was coming from or where the hole in the coverage was. We had Aaron fooled in the Super Bowl. There were plays that he didn't know where we were coming from. And we flashed in front of a guy or we were in a guy's hip pocket. He had so much arm talent. We just couldn't do anything about it. We knew what plays were coming. We knew where he was going. We anticipated all of those things, but he was just so talented. We couldn't fix it. Michael Vick had a little bit of this. Cam Newton had some of this. Now when we see Patrick Mahomes, you see Lamar Jackson, they have parts of this, right? But it's about evolution. Someone you were really close to, Kevin Durant, right? I think Kevin Durant is a generational talent. People are going to see Kevin Durant differently now because there's a Victor Wiminyama, right? And they're going to be like, well, he can do some of those similar things and he's plus seven foot. But until we saw Kevin Durant, no one had ever done that. No one had that sort of handle, that sort of body control could utilize the core in so many ways and be seven foot, right? LeBron James is another person who that big, that solid, that fast, that much explosion. Those are the players I'm speaking of when I think generational talent. Now, if we want to talk generational careers, if we want to talk bested positions, greatest of all times, I believe those are different conversations, which Tom Brady, which Peyton Manning, which Drew Brees, and those guys are a part of. But a generational talent, man, is somebody like you say to yourself, if all else fails and strategy doesn't work and we're not talking about X's and O's and we just roll the football or basketball or baseball out there and told them to go do it, they had the baseline talent to do it. And I think that that was the conversation I was having over who was a really good football player. Yeah, you know, it's funny you mentioned the thing about KD. I also found this other category that we started talking about, which is players that created a prototype. So I would say KD created a prototype without question. Victor Wembeyama may be seven foot five and do similar things, but the first time we saw somebody at that size, with that type of handle, playing that type of game was KD. You could even say that LeBron was this incredible evolved version of Magic even, right? You could say that he's, you know, and without not taking anything away from the fact that LeBron could be the greatest ever, but it was an evolved version of Magic. Kobe was obviously an evolved version of MJ. But I think that in football, is there examples, like LT was probably a prototype of a linebacker. And then does that mean that LT could have dominated in today's day? Has the evolution of all of these eras just changed? When you watch football now, do you feel like some of the players you played with would still be how good they were today? Or does it just change? No, absolutely, absolutely. A lot of those players would still be good. I don't think the game has evolved to that point. You know, like we often laugh when they compare eras and you talk about like guys like Bob Cousy, you know, and we say like, he dribbles down the left side of the court with the ball in his right hand. Or the fact that like, we know what champion was out there with guys that were my height. And we always say those things, but certain players transcend time. They transcend years. They transcend generations. They transcend eras. You know, you look at a guy like Troy Polamalu, who I play with. Troy Polamalu is the best strong safety in football, no matter what era he plays in. If you play in this game right now, he's going to open field tackle. He's going to blitz. He's going to be extremely intelligent. He's going to have the quickest first step of any safety in football, which he did at that same time. Like those things just don't, just don't go away. I play with Sean Taylor. I believe the exact same thing about him. We're talking six foot two, 230 pounds, 4'4 speed, long arms, mean as hell, great ball skills. He's going to be great in any era. You know, Calvin Johnson, Randy Moss, Adrian Peterson. You think about my teams, you know, the James Harrison's, the Casey Hamptons, the Brett Kiesel's. I think all of those players would find ways to be extremely good in any era. Football hasn't changed to me as much as some of the other sports have evolved in the sense that like, if you can run the ball, you can run the ball yesterday, today, tomorrow. Marshawn Lynch would have been a bad man back in the day. He was a bad man during his day. They'd have hell tackling him now. And so I think that all of those things can be the same, but there are certain players whose skill sets are different, right? Like we look at, like you talk about prototypes. I don't know if Steph Curry created a prototype based on the way his physical stature presents to you, but he did create an entire style of playing basketball. Now say to ourselves, if Steph Curry played in the 90s, one, the game was so slow, he wouldn't get that amount of three pointers up. Those amount of shots, right? It would be hand checking. It would be different things as he flows through the lane. Like does that style necessarily translate to an era? I think is a different conversation than thinking about the actual physical tools of a football player or a basketball player, baseball player, because you can develop the skill, in my opinion, for the generation. You know, it's funny because the eras in the 90s talk about like how physical basketball was, you know, they'll always say like, they never would have come down the lane without getting elbowed in the face. And that was probably true. They also didn't guard you 25, 30 feet out. So you, you know what I'm saying? They waited until you got in the lane. Steph would have just sat at the three point line and had wide open looks probably half the time. Yeah. And I think that's, but that's always like the go conversation and why those things are so difficult. Yeah. You know what I'm saying, Rich, because we're, we're, we're thinking of Michael Jordan and, you know, I love when like some 18 year old kid that's a YouTuber watches Michael Jordan highlights live, because you do realize that like all of these things that he was able to do, the, the hang time in the air, the layup package, right? The, the handle, like all of those things at that time were actually new. Yeah. You know, you mentioned Kobe being like this evolved version of Michael Jordan. Michael Jordan, big crossovers of Michael Jordan learned the, the post up or the turnaround just because he was reacting. And then because of Michael Jordan, now there are trainers who teach those things. Yeah. The people you go to in the off season and say, Hey, this is a move that we can work on, but you're working on it because Michael Jordan got a basketball one day and it just happened. And so I think the same thing happens in football. That same thing happens in baseball, right? There are people who are looking at who Barry Bonds was and the way that he played as a five tool player. And now they're trying to do that. The next will be Shohei Ohtani. And so I think as evolution happens, like you said, with KD, we see these different things, but there was always a first one. Yeah. I think the first one is always special. You mentioned Lawrence Taylor. Well, here's Michael Parsons. Yeah. You know? Yeah. Without question. And, and to your Sean Taylor point, like he started that prototype for sure. Yeah. We talking about quarterbacks. You mentioned Lamar. I feel like it's an incredible time for quarterbacks in the NFL right now. And I, I go back and forth on the idea of like who I really think the best quarterback in the league was. I think for a few years, it was clearly the Patrick Mahomes, but it's definitely a debate now, right? Like I'm torn whether I would choose Joe Burrell, Josh Allen, Lamar. I don't even know if I have Patrick Mahomes in that right now today. If you were starting a franchise today, I know it sounds crazy, but I just don't know if I have him. And, and obviously I'm putting aside, this isn't about body of work. I'm not judging him. He's clearly the best in that regard. But if I just had to start a franchise today, I can't, I don't know if I'm taking him. Yeah. I mean, I think it's hard to ignore history. It's, it's hard to ignore the clutch gene. And I think that's the difficult part because you definitely two years ago when Lamar won the MVP and they were number one in the AFC. I was like, yeah, man, like Lamar has surpassed Patrick Mahomes. Like I'm saying this, right? Because they weren't explosive on offense. It wasn't that. And then he goes into Baltimore and he makes the big play to MVS down the field and Lamar kind of sputters. And then you have last year, right? Josh Allen, the MVP. Right. I felt like he was one, then Lamar's two. That's how the voting went. And so Josh Allen, he goes into Kansas city. He has an opportunity to beat Patrick Mahomes. But then again, Patrick Mahomes makes the plays to win. And so I just think it's so difficult to sort of figure out who you would want to take. But this is what I do say about it. The gap has closed 100%. Josh Allen's closed the gap. Joe Burrow, obviously, Lamar Jackson. But we always have to remember that Patrick Mahomes started out so much higher than everybody else. From the first time we saw Patrick Mahomes, he was the best football player in the NFL. He threw 50 touchdowns in his first year starting. He went to the ARC championship in his first year starting. In the second year, he's the Superbowl MVP and a Superbowl champion. I think you almost get desensitized to that level of greatness. And when people start to close the gap, we almost use it as something that's negative about the guy that's number one, rather than talking about the positive gains of the other people, because they had more room to go to reach their ceiling. When you're KD, when you're LeBron James, when you're Stefan, when you're Stephen Curry, right? It's like, how much better can you actually get? How much better do you get than 50 touchdowns MVP in the AFC championship? Rather than doing that every single year, which is an impossibility. And so to me, it's still Patrick Mahomes. To me, I still pick Patrick Mahomes. I feel like you drop Patrick Mahomes in any situation with any team. Patrick Mahomes is the best quarterback for that team. And I think it's going to take somebody to be consistently as good individually and have that level of team success before I think differently. I mean, you're good because I'm very like, it's tough to sway me, especially that quickly, but that argument is very clear. And I would imagine that there's still some of his best football potentially in front of him, right? If you look at quarterback's trajectories, A, when you play 15, 18 years, you go through these ups and downs. But at 30 years old, some of his best years could potentially still be in front of him even. Yeah, absolutely. Now, you know this too, though, Rich, what happens is like, as the competition gets better, it's harder to dominate in the same way. Because you're right. Joe's a dog. Lamar's a dog. Josh is a dog. Like at some point, it has to be their time or their year. We've already seen Joe Burrow and the Cincinnati Bengals beat them. But think about like Tom Brady. Tom Brady had these two separate careers that were both Hall of Fame careers. He had like this start where he wasn't the guy. Yeah. But he still won three championships. He had a back-to-back Super Bowl. And then there was this phase in between where he was by far the best player in the world and they weren't winning championships because of damn Eli. Yeah. You know what I mean? And so it's like, okay, he had that phase. And then you backdoor that with another run of winning three Super Bowls. And you put the icing on the cake by leaving, going to Tampa Bay and then becoming a Super Bowl champion for the seventh time. And so I think that Patrick Mahomes has another run in him. What's going to be interesting to watch though is in between those runs, right? Is there a time in between there where we start to believe that somebody's better? Where there is a team that not necessarily becomes a dynasty, but there's a team that becomes dominant, right? Because we've seen them two times and nobody's having this discussion and I'm not having it either. Jalen Hurts is not going to be in a discussion for the best quarterback in the league, but there's been two times that those two have faced off in the biggest game of the year and Jalen Hurts has actually been better. And so you wonder if there's going to be somebody in the AFC that creeps up and does that as well. Yeah, that's a good point. Trevor Lawrence, somebody that I think everyone thought would have more at this point in his career. Is there still stuff that you see on film that you believe that is possible? Yeah, dude is uber talented, uber talented. I think though to our earlier conversation, Rich, about generational talents, I met Trevor Lawrence when he was in high school and I remember looking at him and saying, that's exactly what it looks like. He was 6'5", he was long, lean, he could make every single throw, the velocity, the spiral, the spin, goes right into Clemson and starts. He was in everybody's mind, at least at that point, a generational can't miss talent. You get Doug, let's be honest, bro, the Urban Meyer stuff, we might as well just taken away a year of that man's life of improving, improving, ascension, any of those things, learning, growing. And so then with Doug Pearson, you felt like you got it. You felt like he reached it. They get the win over the Chargers in the playoffs. They go to the second round. He was supposed to take those next steps and he didn't. Was it the people around him? Was it the staff? What kept Trevor Lawrence from taking that next step? And can Liam Cohen figure it out? And so we'll see going forward. There are things on film that says that he can be what everybody expected him to be. But if it was, in my opinion, it's more some of the intangible things that he needs to continue to do from a leadership standpoint, from a belief standpoint, from a confidence in who he is standpoint that gets him over the hump. It's nothing that has to do with physical traits. And Justin Herbert is one of those ones too. Yeah, man. Listen, people got upset with me because they asked me who needed a bigger game, first game, Justin Herbert or Patrick Mahomes. And I was like, Justin Herbert, right? Because we've seen Patrick Mahomes do this so many times. And I was entertaining and having some fun about things that Justin Herbert could do, being handsome, all those things. And people get their panties all in a ruffle. But the dude has everything. He's tall. He can run. He can move the pocket. He can make every single throw. He's physical. He's smart. I actually called one of my friends who I've trained, who I've known for a very long time, who's a charger. I say, tell me about Justin Herbert. And he said, the thing I learned the most about him in training camp is that he's a dog. That was what I wanted to hear. That was what I needed to hear. And we saw some of that stuff early. This could be along with the way Greg Roman has sort of started utilizing him, what we saw in game one. This could be Justin Herbert's coming out year, the coming out party of people really starting to recognize how good he can be. But the point still stands. Whether it's college, this is not a guy with all that talent who won a national championship. We talk about the NFL. This is not a guy who's won a playoff game. We're still waiting to see Justin Herbert do it on the biggest stage. And I think once he has that feather in his cap, you're going to start talking about him with those four guys you named early on in our conversation. I want to talk about the running back position because I feel like at one point when I was growing up, you saw running backs as the star player. There was a time when running backs got drafted one, two, three in the draft. And then the narrative shifted. Then there was this devaluing of the position completely. Like completely. And with that, running backs usually start and play right away. So the idea is that you play them for three, four years. They never really get their money. And then by the time they want their money, in your mind as a team, you're like they've taken four years of pounding. This is a replaceable position. So I don't pay them. And that's why you see so many of them get screwed around, right? As a giant fan, like it breaks my heart every day to think that Saquon is playing in Philly. But it feels like there's a little bit of a shift. I don't know if it's Saquon that was the inflection point where you're like, well, hold up. Are we actually devaluing this position way too much? Where do you see the position right now? Because it seems like there's a lot of great running backs in the league. The position is on the rise, actually. Christian McCaffrey got that huge deal. And then it was, okay, we're not going to give that deal to anyone else. Look at Derrick Henry now in Baltimore, Josh Jacobs in Green Bay, obviously the gold standard right now, Saquon Barkley. But think also about Detroit. You have Jameer Gibbs, David Montgomery, Atlanta, Bajon Robinson. And so there is this huge resurgence in the running back position. Ashton Gentee drafted sixth overall. It's going to be though like, what does top money look like for the running back? Because not only is there a resurgence in the position, a resurgence in its utilization, but there's a resurgence in its connection to success. What do people always say, right? No team with the leading rusher ever wins the Super Bowl. The best running back team never wins the Super Bowl. Well, you can't say that anymore. Because Saquon Barkley goes for 2000. It's a huge part of who the Philadelphia Eagles are, and they go win the whole thing. And so now I think people are starting to see because we're transitioning the smaller linebackers, transitioning to nickel coverage all the time. The run game can be utilized as a big play asset on offense. And if you have that guy, I believe that guy gets paid and that guy gets valued. Derrick Henry is just incredible. Absolutely incredible. He's gotta be starting to be putting himself in the conversation as one of the greatest running backs of all time, right? Yeah. Yeah, Derrick Henry is a Hall of Famer. And sometimes you need that second stint to show people. What he's able to do at 31, what we saw him do at the age of 30 last year is only solidifying everything he did in Tennessee before now. I want him to get that Super Bowl, right? You want him to get that championship, to have that level of success, to add to this historic career he's had at the running back position. Speaking on the contracts, it feels like with quarterbacks, there's almost this like new bucket where you're not gonna get the five years, right? You're gonna get that Darnall contract. You're gonna get the Geno contract. And it also feels like there's a feeling around the league that if you're quote-unquote like bust early on, let's say, right? You're drafted high up and it doesn't work with the team, that there's still a legitimate opportunity in the right system to turn your career around. Yeah, you know, and I always say this as an undrafted guy, when you're drafted as high as some of these quarterbacks are, you're going to have to prove to people more than one time that you can't play. And you look at a guy like Sam Darnall, they never forget how much talent they believe you had when they scouted you coming out of college. Whether it's Baker Mayfield, Sam Darnall, Geno Smith, you look at all of these players, even Daniel Jones to an extent, this guy was still the sixth pick of the draft. He still went into Minnesota and won a playoff game two years ago or three years ago. And so I think all of those things are important to these dudes getting second chances. And it's hard to find a good one, right? Like, which is evident by them or, you know, that their careers are the evidence of that. And it's cool to see them go to different places, have different people around them, have a different support staff and be able to produce. It tells you, you can't just give up on dudes because they don't become what you want them to become early on in their careers. And no, there's some dudes you draft and they really can't play and you really do miss. But a lot of the times for a quarterback, it's about supporting cast, both as the players are concerned and the organization that they're in. And I like this new contract bucket that these guys get, right? Like, it's not like then if Sam Darnall goes and produces like he did in Minnesota that he gets the same type of contract that Josh Gallen gets. Whereas in basketball, with all due respect to Desmond Bain, for instance, all due respect to Desmond Bain, he's making more money than KD this year, I think, right? Or he's making as much money. It's just, it's nice that that quarterback tier has fallen into this like new economic model too. You know what's funny about that? It's like, it's almost a thought, Rich, which one is better? You know, because you've been in business forever, right? Connected to sports forever. You know our motto, we want everybody to get their money. Yeah. So it's not that you don't want Desmond Bain to make a lot of money. No. Or to make the most money that he can. It's when you look at the career, you look at the impact, you look at the ability, you say to yourself, well, it doesn't feel right that he's making more money than Kevin Durant. And so on the other side of it, it's like, yeah, Sam Darnall got a very good contract. Sam Darnall is set for life, but he's not getting what so-and-so gets. So I don't really know what's better. It's better for the team in football. Yeah. That we can now structure a contract that makes sure Sam Darnall is taken care of in the way that a starter should be. But he's also not, quote-unquote, overpaid for his production or for what we feel he will do potentially going forward. And I think that when you got Josh Allen, you know, hey, he deserve it all. You know, when you got, you know, Dak Prescott, you know, he's going to get his money. When you got Lamar Jackson, when you have Patrick Mahomes, like those dudes are going to get their money. But if you have a Sam Darnall who's resurging, if you have Geno Smith or you have Baker Mayfield, you can pay them based on where they are now in their career. And I think it allows those guys to take care of their families, but also be on contracts where people feel like they're getting everything that they're paying for in the way that they produce on the field. Without question. And that's a good point because like, obviously, you know, I think Desmond Bayne deserves what he's getting and should get as much as he can. It's all relative. And from a player perspective as a player agent, which is one hat that I wear, I want every player to make as much money as humanly possible. From a team perspective, it's good though that these quarterbacks have fallen into this type of structure that you can create. I just think it's more viable and from a team perspective. So I want to pivot a little bit, no pun intended, because like I said earlier in the show, it's not just football that you talk about. And you know, I've said this to you, I've texted you out of nowhere. I remember like a year ago, I wrote you a text and I'm like, bro, you're just on a different playing field. Like your ability to talk about certain things in society that are so important when there's so much fluff out, right? There's just so much content that people are so, like you said, desynthesized. But as it relates to someone like you, you're able to rise above it because your ability to speak on things, whether people like what you're saying or not, is so, with so much conviction and so much like just thought, which I think puts you in a position that you could probably do so much with this talent. Like, do you ever think about the success you're having at Pivot, some of the controversy that comes with being in sports media and go, you know what? Like, I may want to just start to explore some of this other side of my brain a little bit. You know, I think you always want to explore everything. I love sports though. And I love football. Football has given me my entire life. It really has. And, you know, not to take away from the people that have sacrificed, but I'm talking about a thing that has given back to me. And so, no, like I never want to leave doing this in some shape or form. Like that can possibly evolve and I think it will evolve. What I love about the Pivot is, like the conversations we get to have, the space we get to provide for people to be themselves, to be authentic, to be vulnerable. But I want to do it all. If I'm being honest, Rich, I want to be on TV, on a network. I want to sit on football fields and speak before the game about these players who I admire and are going to do things that I love to do my entire life. And I want to sit down with Taylor Townsend and talk about, you know, what she went through becoming a mother and how that affected her being able to go back out and play tennis. And I want to talk about what's going on in society and what these people are dealing with. And I want to talk about mental health and I want to talk about equality. I want to do all of those things because all of those things are me. Yeah. All of those layers in which I speak on are layers in which I live in. And I don't think we can put these people into this box or put me into this monolith of this is what I have to be because I'm a middle-aged black man from the South who played football. And I don't want to be a part of he can only speak on these things or he only knows about this. So for me, all of those pieces of me are important. I want to share all of those things about myself. I want to have an opinion on different things. I want to be impactful in different ways but that does come with a price. There is consequences to being that open to sharing about that many things. And they're going to be people who admire you for it and respect you for it and love you for it. And then they're going to be people who are on the other side as well. And so I think I try to be as thoughtful as I possibly can with everything. I'm extremely imperfect. I don't always get it right but I do try to do things the right way and with a ton of goodwill. Yeah. Did you know you had this skill? Like it feels like you transitioned pretty smoothly into media. You know, I said the same thing to Strahan and he said, man, it looks smooth but I was a mess when I first started this. But did you know you had this? Like it feels like you probably knew you had this ability this gift to gab a bit. I know I had some of it. You know, I think it's kind of like what we talked about though with athletes as well. It's how does it evolve? How do you build on it? I knew I had a foundation to do it. I knew I could communicate about sports well. I knew the only reason I was actually good in football was because of my brain because of the way it worked, the way I saw things the way I could process things. And if I could communicate those things I'd be good at talking about football. I think the rest of it has sort of evolved throughout life. Being willing to share in the way that I'm willing to share but also being willing to or being able to express what's here and here and communicate that in a way to where people can receive it. I don't think, you know, if you have that gift or not I don't think it was important. To have that gift, I don't think you felt like it was something that you could utilize 10 years ago, right? Because we didn't have the spaces of podcasts and the spaces of these long form conversations. And so I think that evolved as the space evolved and I was given an opportunity to do it. And speaking of that brain could you ever see yourself utilizing that in terms of the operation of a team being in a front office a hundred percent? Yeah, I think that's something I want to do. I don't necessarily know if the TV helps or hurts that. You know what I mean? I think I get a lot of chances to show my intellect and show what I know but then there's the entertainment piece of it that I think sometimes people take too seriously and believe too much or bleed too much into. And so I definitely want to do that. I definitely want an opportunity to win and lose again. You know, this is super fun and I enjoy this job but when you walk off of the set you could feel you had this amazing day but that's not what the viewers felt. You can feel that you won but that's not what your producers or your directors or your colleagues felt. The beauty about sports was whenever I walked off of the field I could look up at the scoreboard and I knew how good we were that day. I knew what my contributions yielded as far as the scoreboard, as far as the point total. And you don't get that anymore and I miss that. You know, I miss winning. And what's crazy is I miss losing because at least I knew where I was and I knew that I was alive and I knew that I was working towards something with a group of individuals that were either as happy as I was or as sad as I was at the end of the day. Man, well, I don't think it hurts and I see a future. I feel like you're one of those people that manifest the things you want to do in life. Appreciate that. All right, bro, it was good catching up with you. I hope we can do this again. I hope I can come on to Pivot one day, man. I'm a fan of what you guys do. Thank you. Well, we actually talk about having you on all the time though so that's going to be an easy one. All right, and I'd love to do this again, man. It's a pleasure talking to you. Good luck the rest of the season and I'll catch up with you soon. Thanks for joining the network, man. Have a great day, brother. All right, you too, bro. Yes, sir. Well, I hope you guys enjoyed my conversation with Ryan Clark today and my thoughts on coach Bill Belichick. Remember to subscribe to Boardroom and Yahoo Sports and of course, you can listen to the show wherever you listen to your podcasts. So thanks again and thanks for joining my network.