Jerry Rice Talks Brady, Mahomes, Super Bowl Commercial and More in B/R Exclusive

If you are still deciding what chips to eat while watching the Super Bowl, perhaps an endorsement from the greatest wide receiver of all time will help make up your mind. 

"I like Lay's, I like Cheetos, but I have to say Doritos," Jerry Rice told Bleacher Report in an exclusive interview when asked what his chip of choice is when he's watching football. "You give me a bowl of Doritos, I'm ready for the game. It's essential that you have the snacks. It's just like what Marshawn said, 'You gotta have your chips.'"

It is only fitting, then, that Rice is seen with Doritos when Marshawn Lynch reminds fans not to forget the chips in the latest Frito-Lay commercial playing off the "'Twas the Night Before Christmas" poem.

The "'Twas the Night Before Kickoff" commercial featured Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Dak Prescott, Ezekiel Elliott and more, and the follow-up "'Twas the Night Before Super Bowl" spot that will air during the big game includes some of football's biggest legends in Rice, Joe Montana, Troy Aikman, Terry Bradshaw, Jerome Bettis, Deion Sanders, and Peyton, Eli and Archie Manning.

That's 21 Super Bowl rings in a single commercial, seven of which belong to Rice and Montana.

The San Francisco legends are seen playing a version of paper football with Doritos inside a clubhouse when Aikman attempts to crash the party. Naturally, the 49ers have no interest in letting a member of the Dallas Cowboys join their game.

Photo: Frito-Lay

"It was so much fun just to be a part of this," Rice said. "It was so cool. But it was hard having Troy Aikman all of a sudden just pop up. It's like, 'Are you serious? A Cowboy?' A Cowboy wants to try to be a part of what we had going on. Joe Montana and I, we're just trying to reminisce about different things."

There's plenty to reminisce about for Rice, who is a Hall of Famer with three Lombardi Trophies, 10 All-Pro first-team selections, 13 Pro Bowl nods and two Offensive Player of the Year awards. He sits atop the all-time leaderboard in catches (1,549), receiving yards (22,895) and touchdown receptions (197), which makes him stand out even in a commercial filled with other stars.

Rice talked about how amusing the Manning brothers were—"they're grown-ups, but they're still kids"—and enjoyed watching Bettis and Bradshaw attempt to recreate the Immaculate Reception, but it was his own filming partner who left quite an impression.

"Joe is so competitive," the receiver said. "When he was plunking those Doritos, he was trying to put my eye out. His accuracy is still there. I thought I needed to put on some goggles or something like that."

Photo: Frito-Lay

That type of accuracy helped Montana secure his place among the all-time greats.

Perhaps the only quarterback to eclipse him is Brady, who will be going for his seventh championship in 10 Super Bowl appearances Sunday. To put that historic longevity and greatness into perspective, the New England Patriots are the only franchise with more Super Bowl appearances than the Tampa Bay Buccaneers signal-caller.

And Brady was under center for nine of their 11 appearances.

Yet Patrick Mahomes is already on the early track to challenge some of those accomplishments at 25 years old. If he leads the Kansas City Chiefs to victory, he will have two Super Bowl titles and a league MVP in his three seasons as a starter and some head-to-head bragging rights over Brady.

"Without a doubt," Rice said when asked if he thinks Mahomes will one day be in the discussion with Brady and Montana. "Tom Brady is the GOAT. Patrick Mahomes, he's a GOAT. He's like a little kid; he's a kid GOAT. And I think eventually, just watching him grow, he wants to win it back-to-back. But he's gonna have to go through the main GOAT, which is Tom Brady. The game is going to be exceptional. I'm expecting a lot of points."

Rice didn't have a prediction, but like so many football fans, he is thrilled for the opportunity to watch a legend go up against a legend-in-the-making.

He may also be one of the only people in history who can somewhat relate to the 43-year-old Brady changing teams in the latter portion of his career and still impressing on the field.

Rice played until he was 42 years old, and while he was best known for his time on the 49ers, he still put up more than 1,100 receiving yards in two of his three full seasons with the then-Oakland Raiders shortly before his retirement.

"I think the knowledge," Rice said when asked if he sees any parallels between Brady's longevity and what helped him near the end of his career. "That really makes up for a lot. When your body can't function like when you were younger, it's still having all that knowledge up in your head. I think he makes everybody better around him. He has that 'it' factor."

That "it" factor helped Tampa Bay make the Super Bowl, which is somewhere Rice's 49ers were at this time last season.

However, San Francisco struggled with injuries on the way to a 6-10 record in 2020. Quarterback Jimmy Garoppolo was one of those who dealt with injuries on his way to six games, which marked the second time in three full seasons with the 49ers he missed double-digit contests.

Lennox McLendon/Associated Press

Even when he was healthy in 2019, Garoppolo showed some inconsistency with 13 interceptions during the regular season, a mere 77 passing yards in the NFC Championship Game against the Green Bay Packers, and two interceptions and a key miss on a deep ball to Emmanuel Sanders in the Super Bowl loss to the Chiefs.

Rice stressed how important it will be for San Francisco to get a quarterback who will remain healthy in 2021:

"I don't know exactly what the Niners are going to do; it's going to be up to Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch. The most important thing is we've got to have a quarterback that's going to stay healthy. I don't know if it's still going to be Jimmy G. There's rumors of Deshaun Watson, there's rumors about Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford, all of that. But we feel like we have so many pieces in place right now, and we just need that quarterback that's going to stay healthy, that's going to make the right decisions, that's going to be that 'it' factor. And what I mean about that 'it' factor, is that there's a lot of exceptional quarterbacks out there, but there's a little bit more that makes them special. And that's what we're searching for right now. We started to see some of that with Jimmy G, but he got hurt. Now we have to wait and see what they're going to do during the offseason."

The 49ers may be part of an unprecedented offseason of quarterback movement that already started after Rice's comments with a trade that sent Stafford to the Los Angeles Rams and Jared Goff to the Detroit Lions.

ESPN's Adam Schefter suggested before that trade that more than 18 teams could change their quarterback this offseason.

Grab those Doritos because the NFL drama won't end with the Super Bowl.