ESPN's All Quarter Century Team 2000-2025

[amcoolio]

Three Panthers selected, one of which I think is very surprising, can't really argue with the rest. They seemed to base it on multi season heaters over single season 

https://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/45042048/nfl-best-all-quarter-century-team-25-years-tom-brady-randy-moss-ray-lewis

 

 

Spoilers in White below
Julius Peppers at DE, Luke Kuechly at LB, Christian McCaffrey at RB

[LinvilleGorge]

From a roster building perspective I understand putting CMC on there given that he's one of the best receiving backs ever. But the way these teams are usually structured in terms of sheer merit not sure about that one.

[HeelsPanthersCanes]

Ain’t no chance in hell C-Mac belongs on this list. And I’m indifferent to him faking injuries to get traded, I would’ve done the same thing in this sh*t organization. 

[frankw]

Injury prone Christian McCaffrey but no LaDainian Tomlinson? This is what happens when any jabroni can call themselves a sports analyst now.

Edited June 22, 2025 by frankw

[The NFL Shield At Midfield]

13 minutes ago, frankw said:

Injury prone Christian McCaffrey but no LaDainian Tomlinson? This is what happens when any jabroni can call themselves a sports analyst now.

No Frank Gore with his 16k rushing yards either.  Joke list.

[Gapanthersfan]

1 hour ago, frankw said:

Injury prone Christian McCaffrey but no LaDainian Tomlinson? This is what happens when any jabroni can call themselves a sports analyst now.

Or Adrian Peterson

[tukafan21]

5 hours ago, LinvilleGorge said:

From a roster building perspective I understand putting CMC on there given that he's one of the best receiving backs ever. But the way these teams are usually structured in terms of sheer merit not sure about that one.

The intro to the article talked about how they picked the teams and it wasn't just on overall career, it was a factor, but their peak ability also factored in.

He 100% should be on a roster like this, because it was building the best roster from players since 2000, not the best careers during that time.

And no matter how you slice it, CMC's peak ability if he could have had a long healthy career would have made him one of the best RBs of all time.  He had back to back seasons with over 1k rushing and 100 catches, with the 2nd of them also having over 1k receiving, that's wild.

He's also still only 29 and I think is going to end up playing at least another 5-6 years as he's going to slowly shift into being a slot WR at some point I believe and basically become what Deebo was for the 49ers for a while.

[jfra78]

Leaving Smitty off of there is a crime

[HaricotVert]

If you going to put McCaffrey on there based on little more than ifs and potential then Trent Richardson or Aaron Curry should be there too

[The NFL Shield At Midfield]

10 hours ago, Gapanthersfan said:

Or Adrian Peterson

Should be AD, LT, and Frank Gore imo.  That "practice squad" slot is where you put your hipster picks like CMC.

[Gapanthersfan]

2 hours ago, The NFL Shield At Midfield said:

Should be AD, LT, and Frank Gore imo.  That "practice squad" slot is where you put your hipster picks like CMC.

AD and LT were Barkley before there was a Barkley. If they got a seam, it was over. Wrap. 

Drew Brees on the practice squad is criminal. He was a better QB than Manning. There I said it. Mannings walk on the water so he had to be #2, only because they could never sanely justify him over Brady. Manning had Marvin Harrison. Brees had some dude out of Hofstra. 80,000 yards passing. Come on. 

[CRA]

Fitzgerald should bump Harrison 

LT2 and AD should bump CMC and Priest 

I didn’t really make it past the O skill positions  

[Loyalty4Life]

We got 4 if you count Jared Allen.

It's all an opinion piece and some of you didn't read the parameters under which they chose these players.  Come on, confess.  Who here read the whole article and who just scrolled through and looked at the pictures? 

[frankw]

59 minutes ago, Loyalty4Life said:

It's all an opinion piece and some of you didn't read the parameters under which they chose these players.  Come on, confess.  Who here read the whole article and who just scrolled through and looked at the pictures? 

I can't speak for others but yes I read it. The conclusions are based heavily around the use of the statistical metric DYAR created by football outsiders and used by ESPN for this article. It only includes players whose production began in 2000. But excluding HOF running backs who produced BIG in an iteration of the NFL that was not yet catered to making things much easier for offenses in order for them to prop up more recent candidates is rather absurd and seems like just playing favorites regardless of where one might fall on their opinion of the use of the metric in question.