Jerry Rice Calls Julian Edelman the Best Receiver in Football, Despite the Fact They Have History

Source – Julian Edelman is finally getting the recognition he deserves as an elite NFL wide receiver.

An endorsement from the best to ever play the position certainly doesn’t hurt.

During an appearance Tuesday on NFL Network’s “Good Morning America,” Hall of Famer Jerry Rice was asked which current NFL wide receiver has the best footwork. His response:

“You’re not going to be able to cover him,” Rice explained of Edelman. “You can’t do it. He’s going to be able to get separation from you and make the catch.”

I shouldn’t have to explain why this is a big deal or even blogworthy. “Former Says Something Nice About Current Player” isn’t the kind of thing you see in ALL CAPs across the top of the page on spinning newspapers in old black and white Turner Classic Movies. But this is a big deal. On a number of levels.

First, Jerry Rice is Jerry Rice. The guy who was chosen by NFL Network as the best football player of all time, at any position, period. When you play the same position as the consensus Best Ever, as chosen by the league’s State Run media, that is newsworthy.

Second, Rice is no fan of the Patriots or of Pats fans. Never forget that he was one of the first public figures to rip the Pats in general and Tom Brady in particular when we were still trying to process why footballs would be low on air pressure in the cold and why anyone should care. On January 22, 2015, he told Jim Rome:

I’m going to be point blank, I feel like it’s cheating. Because you have an edge up on your opponent and its unfortunate that it happened…. I’ve played in cold weather, I know how hard the football is and you can grip the leather just a little bit better [if it’s deflated].

I think you have to really put an asterisk on it, because this is going to follow them, you know, for the rest of their lives, because when you look at it, when people go back and they think about the New England Patriots, they’re going to think about these controversies.

I’ve always wanted to do things the right way. I didn’t want to take any short cuts or anything like that.

That is, until some Pats fans found an interview he did for an ESPN feature about receiving gloves in which he admitted slipping Stick ‘Um on his, long after it was banned by the league. The Masshole monkeys came flying out of  the witch’s castle and cyber-pounced all over him. And when he was outed for being an actual, admitted cheater as well as a hypocrite the GOAT of wideouts went off the social media grid for like six months. You couldn’t find him in the summer of 2015 with spy satellites. So for him to single out a Patriots slot receiver for praise, it matters.

But the biggest reason this is important, is it’s Jerry Rice going out of his way to pay compliments to a man who dated his daughter.

From Edelman’s book “Relentless”:

Julian’s high school girlfriend was Jaqui, a girl who he met in eighth grade. She lived up the street from him, so he’d usually ride his bike to her house, and then they would go to Taco Bell or play driveway basketball. But Edelman was terrified of actually going inside her house because Jaqui’s dad was none other than former San Francisco 49ers wide receiver Jerry Rice.

“He was a god to me,” Edelman writes. “The first time I saw him, we were shooting hoops and he came out on the front steps, no shirt on, all yoked up, gold chain, six-pack abs. I was shook, and I think that might have been the point Jerry didn’t really talk to me and never talked to me about football.”…

They both attended the 2017 Kentucky Derby, so while at the horse race, one of Edelman’s Patriots teammates couldn’t help but make a comment.

“I hear Jules spent a lot of time at your house when he was a kid,” quarterback Tom Brady joked.

Edelman says Jerry laughed, though he’s not sure if he actually found it funny.

I don’t have a daughter, so I can’t for a second put myself in Rice’s place or know how it feels to have a pimply teenager getting dressed up to take your precious little princess out when his hormones are operating at Warp Factor 11 and she’s dressed for maximum attractiveness. Or to have my balls busted about the relationship years later by the very man who has supplanted me as the GOAT of all football. I have no idea how I’d feel about it.

All I do know is that, in order for me to heap praise upon the kid who was once horny for my daughter, he would have to be clearly and obviously the best in the world at his job. I mean, if someone asked me about my favorite blogger and there was one guy out there who once tried to put moves on my darling angel, that guy would have to be a combination of Dan Jenkins, peak Bill Simmons, Large and Shakespeare before I’d single him out as the best.

So kudos to Rice for having the integrity to admit that. And to confirm what I believe too: That Julian Edelman is the best route-runner in the game. And if he keeps this level of production up to the end of his current contract, has enshrinement in Canton in his future. Rice’s will almost make me graciousness in all this will almost make me feel bad when Edelman overtakes him for the No. 1 spot on the All Time Postseason Receptions list:

Almost.