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This is the Skip Bayless Show. Episode 51. This is the Un-Undisputed. This is everything I cannot share with you during the Go For The Throat debate show that is undisputed. Today, I will tell you why I have never, ever, ever seen anything like Tom Brady, who shattered every mold and who changed my life on television. Today, I will tell you...
why what happened late Saturday night to LeBron James in Boston against the Celtics was a watershed moment in his career and I believe a career breakthrough for one LeBron James. I will also tell you why I'm still not completely sold on Patrick Mahomes. And I will tell you a story about how Mahomes' agent used to be my best friend.
But first up, as always, it is not to be skipped. So there I was on Wednesday morning, as always, sitting in my dressing room, putting together the rundown for Wednesday's Undisputed, going over topic after topic with my producer, Tyler Corn. We need 10, and we had just finished all 10. I was just going over the video that I was going to request.
to back up my arguments about LeBron and the Lakers at Knicks at Madison Square Garden on Tuesday night. And all of a sudden, Tyler Corn says, "Wait a second." Long pause. "Breaking news? Brady's retired?" We were both blindsided, dumbfounded. Tyler calls up the video that Brady had just posted just seconds before. We both watched it. "What?"
It was just one year ago on the same day that Brady retired. And then, as you know, 30 days later, unretired. But this time I watched the video start to finish. And I told Tyler, this is it. This is permanent. This time it's for keeps. As you recall, a year ago, I sat right here in this chair after Brady had retired. And I said, no, no, no, no, no, you can't.
You can't do it just for your family's sake. You got too much left in that tank of yours, that goat tank of yours, Tom Brady. I pounded on this desk and I said, "No, it's not yet time." And it wasn't. And going into last season, Tom's peers in the National Football League voted him at age 45 the best player in all of professional football. Tom Brady voted by other players
Not just the best quarterback, the best player in the National Football League going into this past season. So I sat there looking at our rundown on Wednesday morning and I shook my head and we began to perform surgery and we tore up our rundown from top to bottom on the fly with clock ticking towards 6:30 and our daily kickoff live out here in LA, 6:30 a.m. Pacific time, undisputed.
As I speak right now, I'm still pretty much in the same raw place, the same unhinged place, the same I'm-not-sure-exactly-what-I-think place that I was at 6:30 a.m. as the lights went up on "Undisputed." I spoke on live national TV pretty much the way I'm speaking right now, pretty much off the cuff, straight from the heart, and ultimately from the soul. I knew it was over.
but it was still hard to wrap my psyche around, "It's over for the GOAT." So bear with me as I speak now, straight from the heart and soul. Not exactly sure what yet I think about what just transpired. As I spoke on television, my mind kept racing back
I got this weird thing in my brain when I get really tired or really under fire, under stress, I get flashbacks in my head to childhood scenes or high school scenes that I've never thought of since because my brain is working overtime and it starts to open up little treasure chests in the deepest part of my psyche. And that started to happen to me on live TV about Brady.
as I kept replaying the early scenes that I saw of Tom Brady. And I kept thinking to myself, how did I not see this coming? Well, who did early on? I flash back to the Orange Bowl, the end of Tom Brady's college career at Michigan.
I'm in Chicago, lead columnist for the Chicago Tribune. I just happened on that January the 1st to be watching the Orange Bowl. It wasn't a great matchup. It was number five Alabama against number eight Michigan. But I started watching and then I couldn't stop because the quarterback who couldn't ultimately and completely win the job at Michigan, this kid named Brady, was throwing a party in Miami on New Year's Day, New Year's night. What?
Tom, Tom, who, wait, wait a minute. Who is this Brady guy? Huh? He went 34 of 46 that evening for three, six, nine, 369 yards, four touchdowns and no interceptions. And I should have seen it coming. He brought Michigan back to win 35 to 34 in overtime.
But in Chicago, all we heard was about the other Illinois quarterback, the more gifted one, the more athletic one, the one that had been drafted in the third round by the New York Yankees to play baseball, Drew Henson, 6'4", 230 pounds, a prototypical NFL-quality rising star talent. Silly me. I thought Drew Henson would go on to become the NFL star, not Tom Brady, whoever Tom Brady was.
Brady shared a lot of the snaps with Drew Henson that year, but got the majority. Brady did. Drew Henson went on to start one game in the National Football League for my Dallas Cowboys, believe it or not, under Bill Parcells. I remember it well. It was very forgettable. So then Tom Brady ran, speaking of forgettable, the most forgettable 40-yard dash in the history of the NFL Combine.
Brady took the most forgettable and cringiest shirtless picture in the history of the NFL Combine, and yet there I was. As a newspaper columnist, I was there that night in Foxborough, Brady's first year of starting in place of Drew Bledsoe, who obviously had gotten hurt opening the floodgates for Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. to start for the Patriots.
I was covering the Raiders. I was there in that press box that night in that blizzard, and it was snowing cats and dogs. And I just couldn't believe my eyes as I watched this game unfold, a game that you'll remember became known as the Tuck Rule game. I called it in my column that night the Snow Job game because I was Raider-centric. I was covering John Gruden's Raiders.
Rich Gannon's Raiders, Tim Brown's Raiders, Jerry Rice's Raiders. I thought they were Super Bowl bound. I thought they were considerably better than the home team, the Patriots. I think they were. But there was a horrible call at the end of the game, as you recall. Brady clearly fumbled the football. Game was over. Call got reversed. Tuck rule. What? The tuck rule? I still don't get it to this day. It was bogus.
I was close with Al Davis, the late great Raiders owner. He pulled me aside at training camp the next year and said, they screwed me. They got on the phone in New York. Commissioner and company screwed me to get even with me. They went with the tuck rule. But the point was, in the snow, Tom Brady was sensational. And I couldn't believe my eyes because who could? Didn't have the biggest arm, didn't have
much of any athletic ability, had sweet pocket feet, but couldn't see it really in the snow. It became an Adam Vinatieri game. He made a couple of kicks in the snow. I still don't know how he made them, but he did. I was a Joe Montana fan. I was close to Montana's quarterback coach in San Francisco, Paul Hackett, very close friend of mine. He had filled my ear with Montana stories and I was smitten. I heard about ballet feet in the pocket.
I heard about clutchness that was unfathomable. Remember the catch game against my Dallas Cowboys, Montana to Clark? Could you believe that my first year on cold pizza, I was so unconvinced about Tom Brady that I openly scoffed at him. Brady recently took a shot at me in one of his documentaries for being so unimpressed with him in my first days on national TV back in 2004 on cold pizza. But
I was there that first night at the end of that first year in New Orleans. I was at that Super Bowl up in the press box, and I watched Brady at the end of the game complete five straight passes when John Madden was saying, shut it down, take the ball out of the kid's hands, play for overtime. Five straight completions, Adam Vinatieri from 49 yards for the victory. I was there the following year.
Front row of the press box as Brady out-dueled Jake DeLome in his second Super Bowl, obviously. I was there for the third one. That was my first year on cold pizza. Still not a believer, not convinced, but I was there in Jacksonville. Brady should have been the MVP of that game as Brady and the Patriots beat Donovan McNabb, Andy Reid, and those Eagles. Then I started to see the light as cold pizza morphed into first take.
I started saying, "Wait a second, this guy is different. This guy is crazy different." And I was the first to name him, nickname him, Psycho Tom. He had an alter ego, the likes of which I'd never seen. This boring guy off the field turned into this cold-blooded football assassin on the field, the likes of which I'd never seen before. Psycho Tom. He went someplace else, some altered state.
screaming, head-butting. Remember the game December 9th? This is 2007 during that record-breaking year. December 9th, Steelers played at Foxborough. Kid named Anthony Smith played safety for the Steelers. Remember this? Leading up to that game, Anthony Smith guaranteed a Steelers win at Foxborough and Tom Brady did not like it. Early second quarter, Tom Brady went 63 yards to Randy Moss.
And as Moss hit the end zone, Tom Brady was full speed. He couldn't run much, but whatever speed he could hit, he hit it, chasing Randy Moss all the way to the end zone because he wanted to get in the face of poor Anthony Smith and tell him just how wrong he was, screaming in the poor kid's face, don't you ever, ever, ever do that again.
They even went after him later in the game with a flea flicker that went for a long touchdown to Randy Moss. Poor kid lost his job the next year for the Steelers, bounced around the league for a while. I don't know, it seemed like that was the beginning and the end of poor Anthony Smith. Man. Just for the record, once more, as I free associate, you have to understand, I don't know Tom Brady.
I've never spoken a word to Tom Brady face to face or by phone. I've never texted with him. I've never emailed with him. I don't know him. I have no personal connection to Tom Brady. But you have to understand, I began to defend Tom Brady on air on ESPN because no one else would. Simple as that. No one else would. I became known as a Brady fanatic because...
I so passionately and vehemently defended him on air against so many ex-stars who just couldn't quite buy into Tom Brady. Tom Brady just never looked or acted the part of the macho, gunslinging NFL quarterback that so many of those folks wanted to see. He wasn't just shattering the mold.
He was obliterating it. He was erasing the mold and starting it over. As you well know, off the field, Tom Brady came off as this aw shucks, gee whiz, lame, corny dad next door. He worked as hard as he could work. He's admitted this. He worked as hard as he could work to say as little as possible to the media because that's just the way he was built.
He played for a coach, obviously, in Bill Belichick. Deflect, deflect, deflect with the media. The less they know, the better we are. Secrecy at the highest level. The Patriot way. That was Tom Brady. I believe that Tom Brady invented the Patriot way, not Bill Belichick. He just never acted the part of that badass, macho, try-anything,
Die for the cause Gunslinging NFL quarterback with the swagger of an Elway or Marino far Namath snake stabler. Yeah, I get it many women did find him handsome. There's the movie out now I've not seen it forgive me 80 for Brady a neighbor of ours in the complex in which we live Jane Fonda is a star if not the star she's the biggest movie star in that movie and I
I saw her interview the other day. She was talking about when Tom first stepped into her trailer, her knees buckled because he was so handsome. But then she immediately went into, "And he was so kind and so generous." That is so not macho NFL gunslinging quarterback. So kind and generous? That did not come across as sounding like the GOAT quarterback. So kind, so generous.
Then there's my wife, Ernestine, not a big Brady fan, never has been. She's always been a little suspicious of him. See, a little bit phony, a little bit fraudulent. For what it's worth, Ernestine never found him that attractive. She'll tell you when she does. I mean, Brad Pitt, I could go down a long list. Kevin Costner, she's just head over heels. But not Tom Brady. She says that Brady comes across to her as weirdly attractive.
a little bit Frankenstein-y. The way he carries himself, a little bit Frankenstein-y to Ernestine, but again, beauty is in the eye of the individual beholder. Phony? No. Fraudulent? No. I'm going to say this again. I worked with a number of Brady's ex-Patriot teammates at ESPN. I've encountered several here at FS1.
contributed to the show. James Harrison played briefly with Brady at the end of the year in which they played Philly in the Super Bowl and lost. But James has told the story on our airwaves of he's got as high a BS detector as any human I've ever known. And he went into that locker room behind closed doors with that detector on high alert because he wanted to see if Brady was even one ounce phony.
Was he different behind closed doors? And James Harrison, who's a bad man, said, "Absolutely not 1000% genuine and authentic." I've never heard a single discouraging word, a single negative about Brady from anybody who's ever played with him. My friend Chad Johnson, nope, not a single word. But so many Hall of Famers I've known,
just couldn't get there with Brady as the GOAT because they view him as ruining their game. He's too protected. He's overprotected. It's the Tom Brady rule. You can't hit him. You can't really touch him. To them, it's like Tom Brady has played a game above their game of football, some game other than football. It's like he invented his own unathletic position
that allowed him to effectively play forever if he wanted to. I kept telling him, "Hey, a man can move in the pocket and it does take some athletic ability." I'm talking about the sweetest pocket feet I've ever seen. If you watch closely, if you watched over those many years, him creating lanes to throw with just a subtle move here or there, I wouldn't underestimate some athletic ability in Tom Brady's feet. But off the field,
those ex-Hall of Famer, I mean the Hall of Famers, ex-Stars obviously, they wanted to see a little more of a "he-man" football player from Tom Brady instead of a guy who played in their eyes some new position that in the end for them was completely unmanly. And I kept saying, "You're missing the point. You're missing the boat, cold-blooded football killer."
Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. No, he's not. Yes, he is. Look at the results. Just look. What are your eyes telling you? His first six Super Bowls, he won them with game-winning drives in the fourth quarter or overtime. The first Eli Super Bowl, Tom Brady did what he always does in big games.
He drove the Patriots 80 yards in 12 plays on third and goal from the six yard line, a tough one to convert against a very good Giants defense led by that great front featuring our man Michael Strahan. Justin Tuck, I knew from ESPN days, loaded.
Third and goal from the sixth, Brady rises up and hits Randy Moss for the touchdown that made it 14-10 Patriots with little more than two minutes left in the game. Wouldn't you think game over? Wouldn't you think game-winning drive once again by Tom Brady?
No, Bill Belichick's defense allowed Eli Manning of all quarterbacks to go 75 yards in 13 plays the other way. There was the helmet catch. There was the great escape. He was sacked like seven times. And I don't know how, speaking of unathletic, he pulled it off. Eli hit Plaxico 13 yards for the game winning score. Touchdown. They didn't need a field goal. They had to go score seven.
to eclipse. They were down 14 to 10. Three wouldn't have done them any good. They had to go get seven or six, but they got seven with 39 seconds left to win the game. What if that had stood up for Brady? There's another Super Bowl. And then we have the Philly special that I just referred to. We wound up 41 to 33 Eagles. Belichick's defense allowed 41 points in large part because he benched
Inexplicably, mysteriously, Malcolm Butler for the entire game, nobody knows why. Tom Brady in that game put up 33 points, hung 33 on a top five defense. Shouldn't that be enough to win a football game, a Super Bowl? In that game, Brady threw for not just a Super Bowl record, a playoff record 505 yards. Think about that. In defeat.
He should have won that one. There's another one. He could have eight and nine Super Bowls. Played in 10. The only quote unquote off game he had was the second Eli Super Bowl. It wasn't great, but it wasn't bad by Brady standards. I guess you could call it an off day, but not really because he's got Wes Welker running free up the seam.
and he threw him a very catchable pass away from the safety, sort of throwing West away from the safety to avoid a collision. West wasn't a deep threat receiver. He was an option receiver underneath, a choice route runner, as you know, bing, bing, bing, all of the possession. But this route fooled the Giants, and he was open, and the ball did hit his hands, and he could not hold on. If he'd held on, there's another one. It's possible that...
Tom Brady could have gone 10-0 in Super Bowls because he's a cold-blooded football assassin. The higher the stakes, the more clutch he got. But not spectacularly clutch because even now, I search my memory bank. Where's the signature play for Tom Brady in any of those big games when he never had one? It's not how he played the game. He actually was the ultimate
clutch game manager because he just picked you to pieces with clutch first down throw after first down throw after first down throw. But no walk-offs, no signatures, no big highlight plays that are played over and over again. No, he was just routinely clutch. He was efficiently, effectively, effortlessly clutch game after game after game. Even the AFC Championship games,
Think about what he did to Saxonville that year. Jacksonville at Foxborough, they had 20 to 10 going into the fourth quarter and Brady's playing with a cut at the base of his throwing thumb that required 12 stitches just two days before that game. I don't know how he did it, something he hung his hand on Burkhead somehow in practice on his pads or something happened. Anyway, I don't know, maybe it was a household accident, but he cut his thumb badly.
There are those mortals who wouldn't have even been able to play the game, but he played. And in the fourth quarter, he throws for 124 yards and two touchdowns and no interceptions and brings them back from 20 to 10 down to win the game and advance to the Super Bowl. Do you remember what he did to Mahomes in Kansas City at Arrowhead in the cold in the AFC Championship game? They win the toss in overtime.
And suddenly it's third and ten. Then it's third and ten again. Then it's third and ten again. What are the odds? Help me out. You know football. What are the odds that you could convert one third and ten, let alone two and then three? It's hard, man. It's impossibly hard. And he did it. Three straight third and tens he converted to Edelman, to Gronk, to Gronk. Impossibly great. But walk-off signature? No.
They rolled on down and Burkhead, Rex Burkhead scores from two yards out to in the football game in overtime at Arrowhead. But I'm here to show you that in all those playoff games, he went 35 and 13. So that's 48 playoff games he played. He never played a bad one. He never had one off day. Help me out. If you can find one, you're way ahead of me. I know he lost to the Ravens. He lost at home to the Ravens. But was it a bad game? I didn't think so. I...
Listen, the bigger the moment, the bigger the stage, the better he was. And yet, I have argued my brains out. I will argue to my grave with my debate partner on Undisputed, Shannon Sharp, a Hall of Famer, over what happened to Brady this year. Shannon thinks he fell off the cliff. Shannon thinks that Brady just had a bad year this year. And I'm thinking and arguing, how? Where? Show me.
Obviously, things didn't go as planned this year. I thought they were going to win the Super Bowl. He came back out of retirement because he had unfinished business. But if you had put Patrick Mahomes in Tampa Bay this year, I promise you he would have been just as quote-unquote bad as Tom Brady was. I promise you they were dead last in rushing. Their offensive line finished 24th in pass block win rate. The receiving core as a group was graded 19th best in the league. The defense...
Just fell apart as Todd Bowles graduated up into being the head coach and couldn't be quite as hands-on. He's as good a defensive coordinator as there is in the game. The defense struggled and suffered and no longer had Brady's back. What do you think is going to happen? Eight and ten happened. But they were lucky to win eight games because Tom Brady was sensational in the clutch. Tom Brady, think about this, led the NFL team.
in fourth quarter passing yards and fourth quarter touchdowns. Led, led the whole league. Why was that? Well, obviously because they're playing from behind, but when they started to go fast, when I kept banging the table and on the speeder, just go, go no huddle.
Was he clashing some with Byron Leftwich? I don't have inside knowledge of that, but obviously they let go of Byron Leftwich, not knowing whether Tom was coming back or not, and now he's not. So I don't think that was the issue. But again, when Brady called his own plays, when they went no huddle, fast break offense, did they ever start to percolate? Up and down the field they went in fourth quarters. Do you remember what happened? Do you remember the comeback against Green Bay?
Do you remember what happened against the Rams? Do you remember the two touchdown drives that helped them overcome their arch rivals, the New Orleans Saints? Man, obviously, I thought Gronk was coming back. He's here with us at Fox. He talked to them about coming back in November. They had no cap room, and he said, I can't do this just because I love Tommy. He was out. Obviously, A.B. flamed out. So, yeah.
You're throwing to two rookie tight ends. I thought Julio was going to be a godsend and he was hurt all year. And yet, despite all that, chips get pushed to the middle of the table. All the marbles. Division on the line. I know it was a bad division. Tom Brady goes up against the hottest team in the division. One of the hottest teams in football, the Carolina Panthers, with Steve Wilks as the head coach. Should still be the head coach. And all he did was throw for 432 yards and three touchdowns. All of them deep balls.
to Mike Evans. Where was that? It had been 11 games since Mike Evans had caught a single touchdown pass, but when it was time, Brady got the ball deep to Mike Evans. Nothing wrong with his arm. No decline in arm strength or talent. Still the same. And then, even though Tom's defense had no chance of stopping my man Dak Prescott in that playoff game at Tampa because they could not rush the passer a lick, it was misleading for my guy Dak Prescott.
There was a throw with two minutes left in the game that if Mike Evans had caught it and it hit him right on the fingertips, should have caught it. That would have been 306 passing yards for Tom Brady just in the second half alone. Help me out. Does that work? I'd say that still works. 306 just in the second half alone. Tom Brady could still play.
Tom Brady could have gone somewhere else next year, and if the circumstances had been just right enough, he could have gone and won yet another Super Bowl, his eighth. But in the end, I know what happened. He just didn't want to be seen as some 46-year-old mercenary quarterback scouring the earth for yet another team that could get him to yet another Super Bowl championship.
He didn't want to be seen as chasing one last ring. To what end? Why? Just because he loved playing football. Couldn't go back to Tampa Bay. They're just a wreck and they're cap strapped and it was over. He turned them around in the pandemic year. He turned the Succoneers into the championship Buccaneers. He installed the Patriot Way in Tampa Bay. He did that, but it was over there and everybody knew it.
The Raiders, Las Vegas, could he have gone? Sure he could have. Reunite with Josh McDaniels. But are they really Super Bowl caliber? Are they really on the verge? Are they just a quarterback away from winning it all? I don't think so, and I don't think Tom thought so. And surely he sat back and said, what if I go 8-9 again next year? What if I go 8-10? What if we barely make the playoffs and we lose our first playoff game?
That division, that's not exactly the NFC South. So in the end, it was so different this time around because remember a year ago, he did have his wife Giselle at home with the kids. She was sick and tired of it. She made that clear. She wanted Tom to come home and be with the kids just as she had paid such a long price for Tom so that he could play football at the highest level. But that's over, as we all know.
He did go through a divorce during this football season. I can't imagine that, having done that myself. There's no more two-parent home for the Bradys. Now those kids need him more than ever. I believe that in the end is why he said, "Okay, that's enough." I know his father said many years ago to the New York Times, "At some point, they're gonna have to put a straight jacket on Tommy and drag him off the football field." But that didn't happen.
I'm very relieved for him because Tom did this his own way, the Brady way, the way he could control. He didn't have to be told, "Tom, it's over. You got to go home because nobody wants you anymore." I am relieved, but I am eternally in awe. I've never, ever seen anything like this man.
I've mentioned this once before on this podcast, but I still have a quote up on my refrigerator door at home that I see every time I open the refrigerator. It's from a long ago Supreme Court justice with a weird name, Felix Frankfurter. But that quote is, and it resonates for me, anybody who's any good is different from anybody else. Anybody who's any good is different from anybody else.
That is the God's truth. That's what I admired the most about Thomas Edward Patrick Brady Jr. He was completely and utterly different from anybody else who ever played that position. He was shockingly different. Tom Brady did it his way. Very quietly, Tom Brady actually made Bill Belichick, who's now getting exposed without Tom Brady. Tom Brady
that quote unquote unathletic, that quote unquote uncool, that quote unquote so NFL, I'm sorry, so un-NFL quarterback is by far and away the greatest football player who ever played. I will miss defending Tom Brady.
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and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash Bayless. Just go to Indeed.com slash Bayless right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash Bayless. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? You need Indeed. Let's take a question from you, from the audience, from Nikki from Washington, D.C.,
Is it harder to debate, excuse me, to debate with a live audience? Thank you for asking that question, Nikki, because we will be in Phoenix next week in Glendale to do two live undisputed shows before a live audience on Thursday and Friday. Thursday and Friday in Glendale, right outside the stadium. And Nikki, I will tell you, it is impossibly difficult
and spectacularly harder to do road shows than in-studio shows. I've been doing them on live TV since 2005, and I'm here to tell you they are simply the greatest days of my TV career. We'll be there Thursday and Friday, and it will be so rock concert loud that Shannon and I will not be able to hear each other that
that we will be shouting words that we can't hear because we have to stop down and pause for the cheers and the boos that resound from the audience. Our debate rhythm will be so disrupted that it will be virtually impossible to carry on any kind of live debate, and I will be electrified by it. I am rocket-fueled.
by live crowds. I turn into, you've seen the ads for the upcoming movie, the cocaine bear. I turn into cocaine bear before these live crowds because I am just exploding into some altered state by the, the eardrum wrecking frenzy that's going on around me. My debate partners have never seemed to love it nearly as much as I do. They've told me before, calm down a little bit. You got to take it down a notch, but
I love it because I live for it. And I've missed the live crowds through the COVID era because we just couldn't go, we couldn't do that. I'm concerned that we probably will not be able to do what I used to love the most, which are the post-show meet and greets where anybody who wanted to just wait in line, I would interact with face to face. We could do selfies, we could do autographs, we could go back and forth about whatever you wanted to talk about for a couple of minutes each.
I missed that, but we still have some COVID protocols, so I'm not sure there's going to be that kind of face to face interaction this time. But I cannot wait to unleash again on Thursday and I know what's about to hit me on Thursday. I'll wish
that when we got back in studio, we could have an in-studio audience every day here at Fox on Undisputed. It's just a little too early at 6:30 a.m. Pacific time to be able to get that many folks out on a daily basis. But if you're on your way to see us, I thank you in advance. Now, a quick word about my biggest issue over the last 20 years with LeBron James. It's a game-deciding issue
that just keeps rearing its ugly head because the Lakers lead the NBA in playing close games. Far too often, in my view, this season, LeBron has failed to close those close games that are begging for him to take over and win, which is why, shockingly to me, the Lakers remain a sub-500 team. I don't get it. But I can show you chapter and verse of game after game after game
in which LeBron, just do it. You can do this. You're playing at age 38 in your 20th year at a level nobody could have fathomed, but you got to close the deal. You got to slam the door. And he has been incapable way too many times of doing that. But that's not my biggest issue. My biggest issue isn't just the last three or four, five or six minutes of a close game. It's literally the last shot.
of a close game. So for years, in my view, LeBron James has run from the late game, close game free throw line by pulling up and taking deep threes or maybe just long twos, which are not his strength. We all know that. I can show you the numbers. Right now, he's near the bottom of NBA three-point shooters. But over the years, he has insisted upon either pulling up and shooting long jumpers
or making what everybody says was the right basketball play passing to an open teammate so that he could shoot the shot or get forced to go to the free throw line and make the free throws. LeBron James always has been and still is the greatest driver of the basketball we have ever seen. Nobody even in today's game can keep him from playing bully ball and getting to the rim.
We're talking 6'9", 260 pounds, still astonishingly explosive, and has always been ambidextrous. Born left-handed, shoots right-handed, can beat you both-handed. It is a lethal combination, especially down the lane at the rim. But since LeBron came into this league, nobody has come close to missing as many late-game, close-game free throws as LeBron has.
He's missed 17 of those in his career. Over that span, that's eight more than the next player on that list, his former teammate J.R. Smith, who wound up with nine. 17 to nine. So LeBron's Achilles' feel has always been at the free throw line. Late game, close game free throws can be LeBrick. LeBrick gets shaky-handed.
Never been more than a 74% career free throw shooter to begin with, but that rate drops precipitously at the late game, close game free throw line. He's been very good of late making free throws. He's been on a torrential tear, obviously scoring the basketball, and I love his new routine. Takes a quick, deep breath.
One quick dribble and launches, just lets it fly, and it's much smoother. He's gone through 20, 25 different free throw shooting routines. They get bizarre at times, step forward, step back, three dribbles, five dribbles, disaster. I've often wondered, why don't you literally hit the lab and work on your free throws in the offseason? But no, I don't know. Maybe it's just not
Maybe God gives you this but doesn't give you that. God gives him best passer in basketball, which he's been since he stepped on the court at age 18 in Sacramento for his first NBA game. Best driver of the basketball, yep, check, check, but I'll be nice. A way below average three-point shooter and way below average for superstars, free throw shooter. Remember George Hill in game one of the 2018 finals at Oracle? Remember what happened there?
LeBron had as hot a hand as I've ever seen him from distance, a rare hot hand. He gets to switch on to Steph Curry at the end of the game and, I don't know, go up and shoot a sort of a
15, 16, 17-foot jump shot, or just drive it and shoot the free throws. Have the guts to go stand there by yourself and shoot the free throws. No, he makes the right basketball play, passes to George Hill, gets fouled by Klay Thompson, and as you know, he did not make both free throws, and we went to overtime. So again and again and again and again, I have tweeted in these situations just ahead of them,
Just drive it, LeBron. And if necessary, have the guts to go make the free throw to win the game. So there we were last Saturday night in Boston. I'm watching with my wife, Ernestine, my little Maltese, Hazel. We watch every single dribble of every LeBron game. And here we went again. Game's tied. Clock's winding down. I'd already tweeted, just drive it, LeBron.
Game is tied. All you have to do, LeBron, is get to the rim. And if it happens, if you get fouled, just walk to the line. And all you have to do is make one of two free throws. I would have given him a 70, I'll go 75, 75% chance of making the first free throw. Now, if he'd missed that one,
I wouldn't have loved his chances of making the second to win the game in regulation because, man, that would have been huge pressure that I wouldn't wish upon anyone. But 75% of just making the first one. But something happened that shocked me, pleasantly shocked me. This became a watershed moment for LeBron James. This became a career breakthrough moment for LeBron James because I cannot remember the time when he did this.
He dribbled the ball all the way up the floor himself. He did not hesitate. He did not sort of drift over here and then drift back trying to decide what to do. Am I going to pull up or what am I going to do? Am I going to make the right basketball pass? He put his head down and he drove it and he drove it right past poor Malcolm Brogdon who had no hope, no hope, gone to the rim. And as he went up left-handed because he is left-handed by birth,
to shoot what was going to be a lay up, lay in just off the glass to win the game. And it's tied 5-4-3-2-1.
Jason Tatum obviously knows the scouting report. They know that he's shaky at best at late-game free throws. So Jason Tatum did just what the scouting report would scream to do. He hacked LeBron across the forearm to prevent said shot from having any chance of getting up to the backboard and off the glass and through the hoop. That was the correct basketball play. And you know and I know what didn't happen.
I guess the refs were so shocked by this LeBron maneuver that they all froze. They effectively swallowed whistles, especially the ref on the baseline, who just stood wide-eyed watching and called nothing. And as you know, LeBron, Ramon, James went berserk. I've never seen anything like the reaction or overreaction that LeBron displayed on the basketball court.
He went nuts. And it went on and on and on. These were historic histrionics. He can be the drama king, but this was melodrama king. I'm not talking about Mello as in LaMelo Ball or Carmelo Anthony. I'm talking about melodrama. An overreaction the likes of which I'd never seen on a basketball court. Went down to his knees, grabbing his head. Oh my God, how did you miss that call?
Well, I'll tell you what was operating in my view. LeBron James has by far the highest IQ in this sport. Right up there with Magic or Bird's IQ in the history of this sport. He's two chess moves ahead of everybody on the basketball court, which is why he's such a great passer. But he had already calculated what was transpiring. Two things were operating in the emotional spill.
Number one, I believe LeBron was greatly relieved that the foul was not called because I think he dreaded having to go shoot those free throws. Maybe it would just have required one to end it. He would have shot the other one, obviously. But I think he dreaded it. But I was proud of him for subjecting himself, for risking having to shoot those free throws. Again, watershed breakthrough for LeBron, Ramon, James. But
He didn't get the call that he asked for. And all of a sudden, it washed over him that I don't have to go shoot the free throws, number one. And number two, I just became the all-time sympathetic figure because this is Lakers-Celtics. This is historical matchup. And all of a sudden, I didn't get the most obvious call in the history of calls. And I am now sympathetic figure LeBron James. And he poured it on.
he milked it for all it was worth. And I did not blame him for that. Again, part of him had to be overjoyed that they did blow the call because then he becomes a sympathetic figure down the road and maybe it will help them get some calls, which brings me to Tuesday night's game at Knicks. Again, the Lakers with AD, they're just better than the Knicks. And I don't understand it. The
The Knicks were begging to be beaten. They missed all five of their threes in the fourth quarter and then subsequently in overtime, they missed all four more of their threes. They went 0 for 9 in the fourth quarter in overtime and I still don't, I can't get it through my head how LeBron can't just seize control of the game and just end it. The Lakers are better than they played at, this is Madison Square Garden, the Mecca of basketball. LeBron's only appearance there this year, obviously, west to east.
And I expected a double nickels kind of game. I expect 50 some points from LeBron because he's been on that kind of a torrential tear. But it was a pretty quiet game by his standards. He did have his first triple double. He was sensational passing the basketball, but they needed somebody to slam the door on the Knicks. And even though the Knicks were slamming their own hand in the door, LeBron couldn't or wouldn't do it.
couldn't grasp it. But once again, we found ourselves in the same predicament. Here we go again. LeBron's got the basketball in his hands, clock ticking down, game tied. Aha. So it's not like you have to make two free throws and you're down one and you got to make them both to win the game. Or worse, it's not like you're down two and you might have to make two free throws just to get you to overtime. That would be
Terrifying. That would be nightmarish for LeBron. This is tie. All you got to do is make one. But maybe that's even more daunting than the other scenarios. Just one out of two. Better be the first one. But here we go again. So I'm thinking, watershed breakthrough? Is he going to do it? I tweeted, just put your head down and drive it.
they don't really have a shot blocker that julius rand did a nice job of just botting up lebron because he's got a man's body but but again when lebron decides rj barrett no come on grimes quickly now they got nobody who can stop him so it it appeared to me they had decided in the huddle that they were going to run a play that didn't involve lebron shooting the basketball so
Anthony Davis comes to pick for him, but didn't pick, set a hard pick. He just faked a pick and quickly spun and rolled to the basket because clearly they had decided to me in the huddle, I'm going to get you the basketball on the roll. So LeBron did not put his head down, did not drive the ball. Real sweet, nice, clean bounce pass. Not an easy pass to pull off between two defenders right into AD's wheelhouse. Unfortunately,
Jalen Brunson was right in his wheelhouse also and AD bulldozed right over the top of Jalen Brunson and it was an offensive foul and we're going the other direction. It's just the one missing piece to LeBron's game that torments me because he's better than that. And maybe if early in his career he had subjected himself to the pressure more and more of running to the free throw line instead of from it, maybe he would have honed himself, steeled himself
into being able to make those free throws like clockwork, like Dennis Schroeder does for the Lakers. He's deadly at the late-game free throw line. Schroeder, he won the game in Sacramento. He just swished two big ones. Remember that game? LeBron, play was called for him, and he didn't really try to get open to get the ball inbounds. They had to go to Schroeder, who looped around the formation and ended up driving it and getting fouled and did what LeBron should have done. But the point is...
This is why I can't go GOAT on LeBron James. This is why I say phony GOAT, because you're not a great shooter from three or the free throw line, and you run from the late game, close game, clutch free throw line. I'm sorry you're disqualified in my book, but I saw the light. I saw him try at Boston, and then, no, he didn't quite have the guts to try to do it again at the Mecca.
But in overtime, they got a call. Why'd they get the call? Hachimura, I thought it was a goaltend. I thought the ball had, you know, apexed and it just started to fall. Just a touch started to fall. It was a goaltend, but no, call overturned from the league office. I think they gave LeBron a call because he's a sympathetic figure in need of a call. Even the referees organization posted that
We blew that call and we're ashamed, okay? We get that. LeBron's a sympathetic figure. But in the end, I was crushed on Saturday night. I was actually devastated because just once, one time, I wanted LeBron to have the opportunity to go stand there by himself 15 feet away and shoot what's called a free throw because it's completely free, uncontested. Just one stroke of the shooting hand.
to win the game. I wanted to see if he could do it. I think he could have, but now we'll never know. About Patrick Mahomes before I go there. I want you to understand something.
I try to deal in the truth and nothing but the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, whether you like it or not. It's just the way I am. Forgive me. And trust me, it's much easier to tell people what they want to hear, to play to the crowd, to preach to the choir, and then sit back and enjoy the fame by association with superstar athletes.
who will love me if I do nothing but love them with every word I publicly utter. That's the easy way to do it, and I don't know that way. Not how I'm built. Heck, it's not the way I was born. My late mother always told this story of how I took forever to come out of her. She always said that I was so hard-headed, so stubborn, even while in her womb, and I was the firstborn.
that she was in labor for hours. She used to tell me, I can't remember how many hours. I don't know. I don't have kids, so I haven't gone through that myself. But it seemed like she said, I don't know, is it possible six or eight hours she was in labor? At one point, she said she screamed at my father, why did you do this to me? My mom didn't want kids in the first place, but that's a whole other story. Her mother wanted her to have kids, and that's why she did. But even now, my wife Ernestine often says to me,
Why do you have to do everything the hard way? Why are you so hard on LeBron? You don't have to be that hard on LeBron. I'm just trying to tell the truth. Why do you do this? Why do you do that? Just leave it alone. No, I can't. I can't leave it alone. I do consider myself to a fault, I guess, a truth teller. And I'm not talking about truth telling for shock jock effect, not to be fraudulently controversial, but
It's just because I'm going to speak my mind. I'm going to speak my heart. I'm going to tell you the truth as I see it. It's my truth as I see it. I am not completely convinced about Patrick Mahomes the way everyone else seems to be. That is not a click bait take. It's what I truly, and I'd like to think fearlessly, believe from the bottom of my heart and soul.
I'm not convinced that Patrick Mahomes is better than Joe Burrow, despite what happened in Kansas City this past Sunday. I get somewhere between outraged and laugh out loud when I hear that Patrick Mahomes is already better than Tom Brady ever was. What? Some points of order, if you please. Patrick Mahomes is 10-3 in the postseason, but would you believe that Patrick Mahomes has never won
a single road playoff game because he's never played a single road playoff game. Not a single one. Tom Brady, I'm sorry, Patrick Mahomes is about to play his third Super Bowl, obviously at a neutral site. But other than those three, he's played all 11 other playoff games at home.
And obviously, he has played an amazing five straight AFC championship games at home, losing two of those to Brady in overtime, as we just mentioned, and to Joe Burrow a year ago in overtime. But Patrick Mahomes has such home field advantage through the playoffs in large part because he and his chiefs have owned the AFC West.
They're 27-3 against the West in his five years of starting. 27-3. Weirdly, the three losses all came at Arrowhead. Phillip Rivers, remember that Thursday night game in 2018? And there was the Derek Carr game in 2020. Justin Herbert got him at home in 2021. But of course, if we hark back to that Super Bowl run by Patrick Mahomes, the first one, Chiefs fell badly.
dangerously behind at home to then Deshaun Watson's Houston Texans. That was a division playoff game. Remember what Bill O'Brien did? He took a field goal on fourth and one at the 13-yard line when he could have gone for the throat, made it 28 to nothing. But Mahomes and company, to their credit, they stormed back from that moment and won 51 to 31. Then a week later, AFC title game, Chiefs fell dangerously behind.
17-7 to Tennessee, only to storm back and win that one 35-24. Way to go. But then Patrick Mahomes played his first Super Bowl. And what did happen? Well, they were down again. This time 20-10 was Patrick Mahomes with 523 left in the third quarter of that first Super Bowl. And he threw a horrible interception. But Jimmy Garoppolo and the 49ers could not capitalize. So
Patrick Mahomes is still down 20 to 10 with 11:57 left in the fourth quarter. And what did he do? He threw another horrible interception. Look it up, check it out. Wasn't exactly Brady-esque, not exactly GOAT material, not in my book. Then with 7:13 left in that first Super Bowl of Patrick Mahomes, still down 20 to 10. He faced a third and 15 at his own 35 yard line. Third and 15, it's a tough conversion.
and with a free-running pass rusher looming right in his face, Patrick Mahomes let loose with what basically was a no-look pass. Not that he intended it to be, but he really couldn't see where he was throwing. He just heaved it in the direction of Tyreek Hill, who was blazing up the left side of the field on a deep route. Fortunately for Patrick Mahomes, Tyreek located that football, that woefully underthrown pass,
before the DB located it and Ty Hill came all the way back and and all but had to wave for a fair catch to catch it, but it did cover 44 yards. No thing of beauty, but that pass somehow completed a Tyreek, saved that Super Bowl for Patrick Mahomes. Third and 15 from the 35. Go watch it on YouTube if you so desire.
Meanwhile, Patrick Mahomes was extremely fortunate that Jimmy G was in the process of coming completely apart in said fourth quarter. In that quarter, Jimmy G went three of 11 for a grand total of 36 yards with an interception and a Dak Prescott Memorial missed TD throw to a wide open Emmanuel Sanders with 140 left in the game. If Jimmy G completes that ball,
which he threw wide right in short a la Dak at San Francisco in the Cowboys playoff loss. We're having a different conversation. But no, he missed it wide right in short. So Patrick Mahomes won his first Super Bowl in spite of himself and thanks to Jimmy G. Not exactly Tom Brady. As I mentioned earlier, in the tightly played fourth quarters of Tom Brady's first six Super Bowls,
He won them all with game-winning drives, fourth quarter and overtime, as well as what should have been that game-winning drive in the first Eli Super Bowl. After that Super Bowl, Patrick Mahomes joined us on Undisputed. I'm pretty sure his people asked our people if he could be on that day. That's how it was presented to me. I could be wrong, but that's how it was presented.
And I think Patrick wanted to be on because he did take issue with the issues I'd had with Patrick in his playoff games, especially in the Super Bowl. And that was fine. That was his right. I welcome that kind of thing. But Patrick Mahomes can be a told-you-so taunter after he wins big games. See last Sunday against Cincinnati. Cincinnati asked for it. They talked and talked. The mayor talked and talked, as you saw. But Patrick...
His wife and his father, they all took shots at the Bengals because that's the way they're built. Again, I told you Brady can go cycle Tom on the field. He ran down, read the riot act to poor Anthony Smith in that December 9th, 2007 game. But after games, Brady's not a rub it in guy. No, he dodges, he avoids, he doesn't do that. But that was Patrick and I was good with it. But then came
the Mahomes-Brady Super Bowl, and Mahomes was pretty awful in that game. Remember that one at Tampa? Zero touchdowns, two interceptions, a QBR grand total of 42. That scaled zero to 100 for Patrick Mahomes. Below average, Brady was 77 that day. And yet, my partner Shannon Sharp argued that Mahomes' offensive line that day was a wreck.
And I've argued back again and again, well, but Patrick has always been protected better than Joe Burrow ever has been in his NFL career. Not once in Brady's 10 Super Bowls has Tom Brady ever played as poorly as Patrick did in that Super Bowl against Tom Brady. Are you sure about Patrick Mahomes? Speaking of Joe Burrow.
He did beat Mahomes at Arrowhead in last year's AFC Championship game. Chiefs were up 21-10 at halftime in that game, but another awful interception, a careless interception by Patrick Mahomes late third quarter reopened the door, and Cincinnati ran through it, quickly tied the game up at 21-all. Chiefs won the overtime coin toss, but on first down, you should look this up, first down
Mahomes misfired badly, incomplete. Second down, he threw up, nearly was a pick six, should have been a pick six. And on third and 10 from his 25, Patrick Mahomes went deep to Tyreek. The pass was, the route was heavily covered. Pass was tipped up in the air by Jesse Bates. Von Bell picked it off and Burrow and the Bengals marched methodically down to a 31-yard walk-off field goal.
Joe Burrow is the closest thing I see to Tom Brady. But yes, after Mahomes lost his first three matchups with Burrow, he did finally beat him Sunday. Even though I thought Burrow was slightly better than Mahomes, he suffered some key drops in that game. His tight end, Hayden Hurst, earlier in the game, hit him right in the hands in the back corner of the end zone. He dropped it. Jamar Chase, who I still think is the best receiver in football,
got a little out of rhythm on a deep ball route in the fourth quarter, and suddenly the ball hit him right in the face mask, hit him right in the face mask, and he did not hang on, or that would have changed maybe our conversation that we're having right now. But, of course, Patrick was playing on an injured ankle, so his legend grew and grew and grew. And I did think he played pretty well on that ankle.
though the key difference in that game was that Mahomes was extremely protected by his offensive line while Burrow, as usual, was running and ducking for his life. Kansas City's offensive line led the NFL in pass, block, win rate this season, just for the record. So the Bengals' last gas play in Sunday's game wound up fittingly being a huge sack by Chris Jones roaring off the edge.
He took the game over, the defensive tackle for the Chiefs. And in the end, Mahomes didn't really win the game with his arm as much as with his legs. We all know what happened. It's third and four, and he took off running. And all I heard was, how did he run five yards for a first down on that ankle? Well, if you do know sprained ankles, it's always a little easier to run straight ahead than side to side. Side to side will not work.
CBS did report at the start of the game that Patrick refused a pain-killing injection, did not take one on the ankle, so it's hard to know exactly how bad it was. But yes, I was very impressed by the five-yard scramble, though not in awe of it. And of course, poor Joseph Asai came flying in late to shove down Mahomes after he was clearly out of bounds.
And that 15-yard penalty won the game for Patrick Mahomes and lost it for the Bengals. They were obviously looking at a 60-yard field goal at that point, which Harrison Butker could not have made in that cold wind. But thanks to Joseph Asai, he's a great kid. He tries hard, tried too hard on that play. Butker did make it from 45, and Patrick Mahomes is back in his third Super Bowl.
Man, would I have loved to have seen what would have happened in an overtime in that game, especially after what happened in last year's overtime. And by the way, just for the record, two of Kansas City's losses this year, this regular season, ended with Patrick throwing a game-ending interception when he was within field goal range against Buffalo at home and even at Indy. You can look it up. Are you sure about Patrick Mahomes?
But we all know what's going to happen. Patrick Mahomes did get back to the Super Bowl, and he is going to win yet another regular season MVP, mostly because Jalen Hurts got hurt. I'm the biggest Jalen Hurts fan. I give Jalen Hurts the edge over Patrick Mahomes in Super Bowl play making. I give the Eagles the edge over the Chiefs. But we all know what's happening as we build up to this year's Super Bowl. That Mahomes legend will continue to explode, even though
Well, in the end, he's just everything that Jalen is not. He's a human video game. He's got a supernatural arm. He's got the deepest bag of tricks of any quarterback ever. The no-look passes, the left-hand passes, the underhand passes still to come. I'm waiting for behind the back and between the legs.
We as fans love to, and heck, we live to be awed by these godlike athletes, and Patrick Mahomes scratches the deepest itch in our psyches. How might he wow us next? Stay tuned. He's way better than Tom Brady, right? No, wrong. Stop that runaway train, please. I just showed you so many times when he was not Tom Brady.
The only thing that Patrick Mahomes does better than Brady ever did was to make viral plays. And once again, Brady still doesn't have that one signature play in his seven Super Bowl victories. But he is consistently and routinely, has been consistently and routinely better than Patrick Mahomes. So much so that I'm embarrassed to even deal with any sort of comparison of Brady and Mahomes.
As I just demonstrated, Patrick Mahomes has been overhyped and his exploits so far have been overrated. And that, Mom, is the stubborn truth from me to you.
That's it for episode 51. Thank you for listening and or watching. Thanks to Jonathan Berger and his All Pro team for making this show go. Thanks to Tyler Korn for producing. Please remember, Undisputed every weekday, 9.30 to noon Eastern Time, The Skip Bayless Show, every week.