The one thing you can always count on with the passage of time is that our perception of how something evolves can change as much as the thing itself. The NFL is no different. We watch the games today and see players that are bigger, faster and stronger than anybody could've ever imagined. But that doesn't necessarily mean the athletes that thrive in this version of the league are undeniably better than the men who came before them.
Consider how expectations around pass-catchers have changed. It would be easy to assume players have only recently begun putting up mind-boggling receiving numbers, goosed by the rising prominence of aerial attacks around the league. But one of the first ceiling-smashing receiving seasons actually came three decades ago, in 1995, when five players -- Jerry Rice, Michael Irvin, Cris Carter, Isaac Bruce and Herman Moore -- topped 110 catches, a number that had never been reached before and has only been surpassed once (in 2018) since.
That's not the only connection between now and 1995. Then, as in 2025, the Chiefs, Bills, Steelers, Packers, Lions, Eagles and 49ers were battling for divisional supremacy. A retread QB (Jim Harbaugh then, Daniel Jones now) was driving the Colts to relevance. And -- of course -- Jerry Jones' Cowboys were in the spotlight. Which brings to mind a simple question:
What current players would've dominated if they had to play in the league in that season?
Why go through this exercise at this point in the season, as opposed to a sleepier stretch of the NFL calendar? Well, in part because there is no better moment to appreciate the timeless talent of these players, who are demonstrating every week exactly why they could excel at this throwback challenge. It also hopefully helps bring the history of the game to life, with a particularly '90s-flavored matchup -- Lions vs. Eagles on Sunday Night Football -- on tap this week. So let's get into it.
You would think it would be easy to compile a strong list of obvious candidates. It's a different situation when you're limiting the list to only 10 players, as we're doing with this exercise.
It's also important to remember how much the game has changed over the past 30 years. "There are a few guys who could've played in the ('90s), but there are a lot of guys who couldn't have made it back in our day," said Lomas Brown, who is a color analyst for the Detroit Lions radio broadcasts and also played with five teams between 1985 and 2002. "I look at a lot of these guys and how they play. The rule changes help a lot of these guys out compared to back when we were playing."
Brown will have a great seat to watch two of the players who were no-brainers on this list when the Lions play the Eagles: Detroit right tackle Penei Sewell and Eagles running back Saquon Barkley. Brown was an All-Pro left tackle for the Lions in 1995, so that was a special year for him individually. He also remembers how rugged the NFL was in those days. Detroit actually suffered a brutal beating in the playoffs that season to an Eagles team that was noted for its toughness.
As Brown stated, most of today's rule changes speak to how physical the game was in the 1990s. It was common for defensive backs to deliver crushing hits on defenseless receivers. Chop blocks were legal, and tacklers could hit quarterbacks in the head and the legs. This isn't a defense of those days; it's simply a reality of how violent the sport could be in that decade.
Even the players of that day carried different dimensions. A 6-foot-2, 252-pound running back like Baltimore's Derrick Henry wouldn't be a unicorn in that world. Philadelphia's Zack Baun was one of the best linebackers in football last season, and he's 25 pounds lighter than Bryan Cox, a Pro Bowler with the Dolphins in 1995. And big receivers were all the rage back then. Most of the best in the business measured in the 6-2 to 6-4 range, including the aforementioned Rice, Carter and Irvin.
All those factors make picking players who could thrive 30 years ago much harder. Former Cincinnati Bengals head coach Marvin Lewis said there are some younger players who've caught his eye, like when Atlanta running back Bijan Robinson amassed 238 scrimmage yards in a win over Buffalo in Week 6. Lewis also is also high on San Francisco 49ers All-Pro linebacker Fred Warner, who didn't make the cut here because he is out for the season with a broken and dislocated ankle.
Lewis stressed that a player's mental approach matters just as much when thinking about how they would play 30 years ago.
"I think about edge rushers and guys like Bruce Smith or Michael Strahan and they had more discipline to them than what I see from these guys today," Lewis said. "I'm watching Buffalo the other day, and (defensive end) Joey Bosa is killing them because he jumps underneath on a pass rush, and the quarterback jumps outside (the contain). I would say there was 100 percent more discipline in the coaching back then. And you had to answer to your teammates."
So now you have a sense of the thought process behind this exercise. And here comes the fun part: Deciding who made the list. There's bound to be plenty of complaints and arguing about who's not in this club. Just know that current status doesn't mean everything in an exercise like this. It's more about the people who fit best in an era that has long since passed.
Here are the 10 who stood out, with era-appropriate comps included:
Makes magic and directs traffic like: Steve Young
The easy comp here is one that followed Mahomes out of college -- Brett Favre. The one that makes more sense involves another Hall-of-Fame quarterback in that era who could make plays with his legs and his arm -- Young. Mahomes has become a legend because of moments that drop jaws and leave fans scratching their heads in amazement. What's often underrated about his game is the cool efficiency that made Young so dangerous. Yes, Mahomes could surely have sliced and diced defenses in the '90s, but his penchant for managing the game (he ranks third in NFL history with a 101.8 career passer rating) would've been just as potent as his superpowered heroics.
Of course, it also helps that the man has three Super Bowl victories under his belt. If you want somebody who can hang with the heavyweights of the day -- a group that includes Favre, Young, Troy Aikman, John Elway, Dan Marino, Jim Kelly and Warren Moon -- you had better have a guy who knows how to win. That is what separates Mahomes from Buffalo's Josh Allen, while his durability makes him an easy pick over Joe Burrow. If you're wondering why Lamar Jackson didn't make the grade, then think about that decade. Sadly, it is highly unlikely anyone would've been open-minded or creative enough to build an offense around his skillset as a QB. Mahomes is the guy, hands down.
Can carry his entire team like: Emmitt Smith, Barry Sanders and Terrell Davis
The running back position in the '90s was still a critical part of offensive success. As much as teams needed effective quarterback play, they also thrived when they had a feature back who could handle 25 to 30 carries a game. Of the few players today who can do that today, Barkley has proven he's the cream of the crop. The Philadelphia Eagles put their offense on his shoulders when they were struggling offensively and sitting at 3-2 last season. He responded with one of the most impressive efforts a running back has produced in any era. With his carries-per-game mark ramping up from 18 over Weeks 1-5 to 23 the rest of the way, Barkley set league records for rushing yards (2,504) and scrimmage yards (2,857) in a full season (including playoffs). Philadelphia also won 16 of its next 17 games after increasing his workload, a decision that helped the Eagles eventually capture the Lombardi Trophy.
That's the kind of productivity you used to see from stars like Smith, Sanders and Davis back in the day. Yes, the Eagles are going through more offensive issues this season, and Barkley wasn't even on pace for 1,000 yards through seven games. But then first-year offensive coordinator Kevin Patullo fed Barkley the ball in a Week 8 win over the Giants, matching a season high with 10 first-half carries for the back, and Barkley responded with a season-high 150 yards. Sound familiar? Barkley still can alter fortunes in an instant -- as he did this past week with a difference-making 41-yard catch-and-run in a narrow win over the Packers on Monday Night Football. That's why he's on this list over players like Baltimore's Henry and Atlanta's Robinson.
Generates otherworldly numbers like: Jerry Rice
If you want to know how much the passing game in the NFL changed in 1995, think about these two stats: There were only seven 100-catch seasons between 1990 and '94 (and Green Bay's Sterling Sharpe achieved that feat twice) -- and in 1995, there were nine different receivers who topped that mark. Given how much the passing game was exploding, a stud like Jefferson would've had a great chance to be right there with the elite talents of that era. In 2020, he became the first rookie since the merger to reach 1,400 receiving yards, setting a new league record at the time. His 1,400 receiving yards in 2020 set a new league record at the time for first-year players. A year later, he came within 16 yards of surpassing Randy Moss for the Minnesota franchise record for receiving yards -- Jefferson finished with 1,616, becoming the only player in league history to compile 3,000-plus yards in his first two seasons. If all that wasn't enough, Jefferson comfortably surpassed Moss the next year, finishing his third season with Offensive Player of the Year honors after producing 128 receptions and 1,809 yards.
And that's just what he did in his first three seasons. Along with making four Pro Bowl teams and earning first-team All-Pro honors twice during his career, Jefferson is the youngest player to ever reach 8,000 receiving yards and one of only six players to produce at least three 1,500-yard seasons (Rice has four).
You're telling me that guy wouldn't have been cooking 30 years ago with Jefferson's combination of savvy route-running and explosiveness? Rice is the greatest receiver -- and arguably the greatest player -- ever, and even he did not start his career as prolifically as Jefferson has. Think about it this way: Through this point in the season, Jefferson has gotten off to his slowest start since entering the league, and he is still on pace for 97 receptions and 1,295 yards through nine games. You put a monster like that in an era where defenses were trying to keep up with offensive advancement and see what happens. We guarantee you it wouldn't have been pretty for opposing teams.
Explosive with the ball like: Isaac Bruce and Tim Brown
It's nearly impossible to talk about Jefferson without mentioning Chase. The pair helped LSU win a national championship during their days as college teammates. They both terrorized the league as NFL rookies and kept lighting up defenses with each passing season. Chase won Offensive Rookie of the Year honors in 2021, when he helped the Bengals reach the Super Bowl for the first time in 33 years. He won the receiving triple crown last year, when he led the league in receptions, yards and receiving touchdowns. Chase also has been stellar during the times when quarterback Joe Burrow has been sidelined with injuries. Chase produced 100 receptions in 2023 -- when a wrist injury cost Burrow the last seven games of that season -- and the star wideout is carrying the bulk of the Bengals offense this year, while the team waits for Burrow to return from a turf toe injury.
Chase already has a league-leading 76 receptions on 107 targets through nine games. Just as with Jefferson, it's that ability to produce regardless of the circumstances that makes Chase a great candidate as a throwback player. Where Jefferson is more of a tactician, Chase is dynamic in and out of breaks, with the ball in the air and after the catch. And when you think about the evolution of the passing game in 1995, players who could generate explosive plays had a whole bunch of fun. There literally was only one receiver in every season between 1990 and '94 that reached the 1,400-yard mark. Six different players accomplished the feat in 1995, with Jerry Rice's 1,848 setting a new league record at the time. It's not hard to imagine Chase -- whose career mark of 88.1 receiving yards per game ranks third overall to Jefferson (94.4) and Puka Nacua (90.3) -- performing in a similar fashion to Hall-of-Famers like Bruce or Brown in those days, players who could sting you as soon as the ball touched their hands. Let's also not forget the West Coast offense was the predominant system being run around the league. As we've seen in Cincinnati, which runs a version of that scheme, its prevailing popularity at the time would've been ideal for somebody as dangerous as Chase.
Mauls opponents like: Willie Roaf
NFL teams were clamoring to find offensive tackles who could keep their quarterbacks safe in the 1990s. The proliferation of edge rushers that flooded the league starting in the 1980s -- stars like Lawrence Taylor, Bruce Smith and, later, Derrick Thomas -- made it imperative for every team to find pass-blockers who could hold up against the variety of power and speed aimed at them every weekend. There were some gifted tackles who came into the league in the '90s because of that trend, and Sewell would've fit right in with someone like Roaf, who won his second of four career first-team All-Pro nods in '95, or even Orlando Pace and Jonathan Ogden, who entered the NFL after this season but became linchpins of Super Bowl teams during their careers. Yes, we get it -- Sewell plays right tackle instead of left tackle, where those Hall-of-Famers played. You also must remember that Sewell was drafted as a left tackle when he entered the league in 2021. He only plays on the right side because Detroit already had a good player on the left, Taylor Decker.
Sewell was named first-team All-Pro in 2023 and 2024, and he likely would've earned that same honor had he been playing anywhere along the offensive line. His athletic ability is off the charts for someone measuring 6-5 and 335 pounds. Sewell is so blessed that the Lions actually let him carry the ball on an end-around option play in a Thanksgiving Day win over Chicago last year (Sewell lined up in the slot in that situation). As much as you can point to other talented linemen, it's hard to believe there is anybody else with his ceiling. Anytime you find a ballet dancer's feet on a giant with a nasty streak, you're going to find a generational talent. Sewell would've been as popular in 1995 as he is today for one simple reason: He makes life easier for guys throwing the football.
Does it all like: Shannon Sharpe and Ben Coates
The tight end position was going through a serious transformation in the mid-90s. You had more athletic players moving into the role (oversized wide receivers like Sharpe), but teams also needed dudes who could catch and excel at blocking (think Coates). That's where Kittle comes into this conversation. With all due respect to a future Hall-of-Famer like Kansas City's Travis Kelce or a rising star like Las Vegas' Brock Bowers, Kittle has been the gold standard for all-around tight end play for most of his career. He relishes the idea of blowing up linebackers in the run game. He's just as adept at operating downfield or racing past hapless defenders after a reception.
Now imagine him back in 1995. Kittle is far more fluid as an athlete than some of the bigger names of the day, players like Jay Novacek, Brent Jones and Wesley Walls. Kittle also has the size -- his 6-4, 250-pound frame is nearly identical to that of Coates, who checked in at 6-5, 245 -- to hold up against some of the headhunters who roamed the secondary back then. It certainly was a different game in 1995, as Coates (84 catches, 915 yards, six TDs for the Pats in '95) was the only tight end to rank among the top 30 players in receptions that season. Kittle -- who's averaging 4.7 catches and 64.1 receiving yards per game in his career -- would've been right there with him in productivity, judging by what he's shown in this era.
Rules up front like: Dan Saleaumua, Sam Adams and Gilbert Brown
The league was filled with supersized interior defensive linemen like Vea back in 1995. They were vital to success because of how much the running back mattered when it came to offensive prosperity. Any defense with a soft front was doomed to a weekly bludgeoning by monstrous offensive lines like the one the Cowboys possessed when they won that year's Super Bowl. Before the league started turning more toward smaller interior pass rushers like Warren Sapp and John Randle, it had a tremendous need for heavyweights like Saleaumua (6-0, 305 pounds), Adams (6-3, 350) and Brown (6-2, 340).
To understand the damage Vea could've caused in those days, consider that Hall-of-Famer Cortez Kennedy was listed at 6-3 and 305 pounds. Vea is 6-4 and 347 pounds, and he's crazy athletic. Aside from being an elite run stuffer, he has 33 sacks in seven seasons (including 21.5 over the past four combined), and he can even drop into coverage on certain calls.
Talents like Vea often get overshadowed in today's game, because it's mainly about rushing the passer. The splash plays generated by the likes of Chris Jones, Demarcus Lawrence and Jalen Carter are always going to play better to the less experienced eye. That's fine. Bucs head coach Todd Bowles knows exactly what Vea means to his defense. And since Bowles was still playing in the league back in the early 1990s, he surely has a sense of how successful Vea would've been then.
Wrecks shop like: Reggie White and Bruce Smith
There are lot of talented edge rushers in the NFL. Nobody is better than Garrett when it comes to that position. He's produced at least 14 sacks in four straight seasons -- which makes him the first player in league history to do that -- and he's almost guaranteed to push that streak to five, given that he got to 11 sacks before Week 11. Five of those came in one game, a Week 8 loss to New England in which he set a franchise record.
For this exercise, it's also important to note that Garrett is 29 years old. One glance back at the 1995 season, and you'll see an intriguing fact about the sack leaders of that year: Only two of the top seven players in that category (Defensive Player of the Year Bryce Paup and Neil Smith) were under the age of 30. It was still a league where technicians could dominate. Future Hall-of-Famers like White (34 at the time, and tied for sixth-most sacks with 12) and Smith (32 and tied for 13th with 10.5) remained huge problems for opposing offensive tackles. Garrett would've been similarly devastating in that era. He's a little bigger than Smith (Garrett is 6-4 and 272 pounds, while Smith was listed as 6-4 and 262 pounds), but both players were blessed with a mind-boggling combination of strength, speed and agility. Like Smith, Garrett can get to a quarterback any way he wants, largely because he possesses the quickest get-off in the business. There are other edge rushers who have skills that would have translated 30 years earlier -- Maxx Crosby, T.J. Watt, Nick Bosa and Aidan Hutchinson come to mind -- but Garrett is the only no-brainer in the group. He'd be great no matter when he played.
Ranges the field like: Junior Seau and Derrick Thomas
Marvin Lewis made a point of highlighting Parsons as a player who fits this theme, because he's studied Parsons firsthand this season. What stood out for Lewis was the versatility Parsons brought to the Packers defense after arriving from Dallas in a trade before the regular season started. Parsons can terrorize quarterbacks off the edge, move inside to create mismatches against lumbering guards on passing downs and be a difference-maker as an off-ball linebacker. In many ways, he's a reminder of the damage Seau used to cause back in his prime. Seau could line up anywhere when he was a star for the Chargers and take over games. He had the speed to run sideline to sideline, the instincts to sniff out offensive strategies and the kind of passion that energized his defensive teammates.
Just think of how quickly Parsons has impacted Green Bay's pass rush. He created immediate pressure on Detroit's Jared Goff in a season-opening blowout of Detroit, then enjoyed a three-sack, 11-pressure day against Arizona in Week 7. The Packers haven't had a player break 10 sacks in a season since 2020, but this year, with Parsons in the mix, they have two on pace to hit that mark: Parsons (6.5 sacks so far) and Rashan Gary (7.5). Parsons has also logged 16 QB pressures after being chip-blocked or double-teamed this season, more than anyone else in the NFL, per Next Gen Stats. Given that Parsons has never produced less than 12 sacks in any of his previous four pro seasons, it's fair to think he'd be just as disruptive as Thomas was in the 1990s. The league was opening up the passing game like never before, and most of the quarterbacks couldn't move. Parsons would've been a nightmare every time he took the field with that dynamic in play.
Blankets WRs like: Deion Sanders and Rod Woodson
The 1990s were a revolutionary period for the cornerback position because of two men: Sanders and Woodson. Sanders changed the game with his electric speed and ability to literally shut down one side of the field when it came to opponents throwing the football. Woodson combined toughness and technique with his own breathtaking physical skills. As a result, cornerbacks suddenly became cornerstones of their teams, which is what Surtain -- whose father, Patrick Surtain, notably began his own career as an NFL cornerback in the '90s -- has been in Denver for most of his brief career. The younger Surtain has tremendous size (6-2, 200 pounds) and athleticism, but what sets him apart is exactly what made Sanders and Woodson shine: He can do things that mere mortals simply can't.
When you think about the sheer physical heft of the star receivers in the 1990s, it's apparent that cornerbacks needed the length to match up. The league leader in receptions in 1995 was Detroit's Herman Moore, who was 6-4 and 210 pounds. The runners-up were Minnesota's Cris Carter (listed at 6-3 and 200 pounds) and San Francisco's Jerry Rice (6-2 and 200 pounds). Throw in another Hall-of-Famer who also stood at least 6-2 (Michael Irvin), and you can see where this is heading. You had a great chance of making a name for yourself at cornerback if you were big and fast, and Surtain checks a lot of boxes. Though he is currently sidelined with a pectoral strain, Surtain has been a leading force on a fearsome Broncos defense (No. 2 in EPA per dropback, per Next Gen Stats) that's powered Denver into playoff contention. There's a reason that he joined Woodson and Sanders last season as one of only five cornerbacks to be named NFL Defensive Player of the Year. Surtain is that special.
