Phantoms Of The Kickoff (Part 5/5) - Patriot Legend Brandon King Played 1,629 Career Snaps On Special Teams And Just Two At His Actual Position
Meet Brandon King. King of the Phantoms of the Kickoff. A clandestine group of NFL players spending pretty much their entire NFL career playing special teams without ever really getting a chance at their actual position.
We conclude this five-part blog series fittingly no one seems to be reading by honoring King Brandon. Our leader in Chief who would have absolutely no clue what we were talking about if we called him that. No, I'm not talking about Joe Biden, I'm talking about defensive back Brandon King, who played a staggering 1,629 career special teams plays and just a measly TWO defensive plays. That's .06% of his career plays being at the position he "played".
Before we honor King Brandon, I do need to follow-up on yesterday's Phantom #2A, Don Jones. You've heard the term "safety first", yeah? Well Don Jones sure as hell hasn't. Jones was a safety who literally never played safety for even one play in his entire career of 966 special teams plays. You could say his only role in being a safety was sitting on the bench as a safety in case the team was ever in desperate need of a safety safety to come in the game to play safety.
But wait! While Jones never played his actual position of safety, he did play ONE non special teams play of his career. ONE. After 43 games (about three seasons worth) of being a safety safety, he was involved in an offensive play vs the Eagles on a punt fake. Technically, since it was a fake, it's logged as an offensive play. Well, shoutout to my follower on Twitter who after yesterday's blog dug up this play and made a YouTube video of Don Jones' career non-special teams highlights.
Don Jones Career Non-Special Team's Highlights
I'm sure there's probably a stupid ad overlaying this video, but I beg you honor a man who spent 966 grueling plays for this moment of his career and endure the 15 seconds of ads for the payoff of all three seconds of Don Jones' highlights.
See the guy with the ball? That's not our guy. Our guy's at the very bottom putting on a block for a run play that couldn't have been further designed away from his direction. And while this is merely a three-second clip encapsulating Don Jones' offensive tape, he spends about 70 percent of these three seconds being completely covered up by the score graphic. Brutal.
Don Jones Career Offensive Highlights In Still Frame Form:
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In light of this new evidence, I think there's a claim here to make Don Jones the #1 NFL phantom player of all time. Then again, there's something poetic about him taking the bench to someone else just one more time. And that someone is today's #1 on this list - Brandon King.
1,629 special teams snaps. Two defensive snaps. Let's check out his snap count stats for every game of his career. You can see the last three columns show (from left to right) offensive, defensive, and special teams snaps.
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Absolutely unreal, right?
You're right. It's not the full picture. We forgot playoff games:
And these playoff games are important because this is what led me to choose King as the King of the Phantoms. Our guy today is a TWO-TIME Super Bowl winner for the New England Patriots. You can't tell the story of the Patriots' dynasty without Brandon King. While he recorded zero stats in either Super Bowl win, he was on the field for special teams and probably set up tackles for his teammates to keep the 28-3 comeback in motion. As innocuous as he might seem to have been, the butterfly effect says Tom Brady doesn't comeback to win that game without Brandon King.
Honestly, I think this dude had it all figured out. Dennis Rodman said it best in The Last Dance: "I'll play basketball for free, I get paid for the bullshit". You'll recall he was referring to the media scrutiny and mobs of fans never allowing him a moment to himself. Well, Brandon King found a way to skirt around all that and still be a two-time Super Bowl winner without anyone having any freaking clue who the hell he ever was. And he got paid too. $7,252,691 according to Spotrac. For that, I'm calling him the #1 Phantom of the Kick Off.
Cheers to our King. Probably a spy stationed in Russia nowadays with this covert resume. Maybe that's what he was up to in 2019 and 2020 which is missing in his stats above. Hmmm. If so I hope I'm not burning him with this blog. That'd be worse than him getting burned for 16-yards in one of his two career plays at his position of safety.
Well. Safety safety.
Phantoms of the Kickoff - Part 1
Phantoms of the Kickoff - Part 2
Phantoms of the Kickoff - Part 3
Phantoms of the Kickoff - Part 4