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On the wall in the office of Titans trainer Todd Toriscelli is a framed, signed photograph.

It’s a picture of Ronde Barber — soon to be Pro Football Hall of Famer Ronde Barber.

Toriscelli spent 17 seasons as the trainer of the Buccaneers — the first 16 of those with Barber.

The photograph is hung with the hope that it will be noticed and a young player will ask, “Who is that?” And even if that doesn’t happen, Toriscelli will bring up Barber in his annual meetings with rookies.

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What will he tell them?

Well, he could say Barber was the one who sealed the 2002 NFC championship with a pick-six that sent the Bucs to the Super Bowl — the photograph is of that play.

Toriscelli could tell them Barber was voted All-Pro five times and all-decade for the 2000s.

He could say he is the only player in NFL history with 45 or more interceptions and 25 or more sacks.

The trainer could point out Barber scored 14 non-offensive touchdowns, more than all but three players ever.

He could tell them that Barber watched tape like a quarterback and that he would never leave the facility before reviewing tape of that day’s practice.

But that isn’t what Toriscelli wants them to know.

This is the story Toriscelli tells.

Barber is one of two, Toriscelli says. His twin is Tiki.

To young Ronde, it seemed like Tiki was better than him at everything. He was bigger, stronger, faster, more athletic and savvier in sports. In baseball, Tiki was positioned at shortstop and Ronde was sent to the outfield. He couldn’t beat Tiki in the 100 meters, so Ronde ran hurdles.

Their football coach, seeing star potential, lined up Tiki at running back, where the best athletes played. Ronde was primarily a safety. Tiki was a starter from day one in high school football. Ronde had to earn his playing time.

At Virginia, Tiki played as a freshman; Ronde was redshirted. Tiki was chosen with the 36th pick in the 1997 NFL Draft; Ronde went 66th.

“I was,” Ronde would say, “always a half-step behind.”

But it was a glorious half-step. It was the half-step that would push Ronde beyond Tiki and almost everyone else he viewed as competition. It was the half-step that was responsible for the insecurity that made Ronde different.

Ronde had what he calls a fear of failure. In high school, his opportunity to play came when another player was injured. Same thing in college and in the NFL. So once he was on the field, Ronde would not come off.

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This is how Barber would say it: “I always had this sense that I felt like I wasn’t doing my job if I was letting anybody else do my job.”

Toriscelli brings up Barber’s rookie year. He had a strained hip flexor, so Toriscelli put the cornerback on the injury report. Barber didn’t like that.

“Hey, Todd,” he told him in the cafeteria. “Take me off the injury report and don’t ever put me on it again.”

Toriscelli was floored. “I’m like, ‘OK. I don’t even know this guy.’”

But Toriscelli took Barber off the injury report and rarely put him on another. Barber went the last nine seasons of his career without being listed on an injury report.

It wasn’t because he never was hurt, of course. In his career, there was a high ankle sprain, a quad strain, a knee sprain, a broken left thumb and subsequent surgery, a fractured forearm, a concussion, a right hamstring strain and more.

Barber never missed a game because of an injury in 241 opportunities. He started 215 straight — the seventh-longest streak in NFL history. Willie Wood has the next-longest streak for a defensive back at 154 games. Barber’s streak could have been 230 games, but he volunteered to let Brian Kelly start ahead of him in 1999 when he had a pulled hamstring, even though Barber knew he would play nickel in the game.

He never spent a day on injured reserve and never came off the field because of an injury.

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Toriscelli talks about 2002. First, Barber tore his MCL and kept going. In a November game against the Panthers, he broke his thumb in five places trying to punch a ball out. The following day, Barber had surgery and had five pins inserted in his hand, and the expectation was that he would miss the rest of the season. But on Wednesday when the Bucs were preparing to practice, Barber stunned his team by jogging out to the field in full gear, still wearing his post-op gauze and dressing.

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“You can’t go out there — you can’t even get that wet,” Toriscelli told him.

Barber’s reply: “No one other than me is ever lining up at that position. Not even for practice.”

So Barber practiced, and in his next game, he intercepted Brett Favre.

Three games later against the Lions, he tore his PCL in the same knee that already was injured.

Most players would have gone on injured reserve. Some would have taken a handful of games off. A few might have sat out for a week or so and then tested it.

The day after the game, Barber worked out, going from a walk to a jog to a run on the treadmill. Then he iced and did it over again. He was testing his pain threshold. On Wednesday, he ran on the field before practice, pushing himself the same way.

It went like that for the rest of the season. If he could practice, he did. When he couldn’t, Barber acted like he was practicing in the beginning periods when the media was present. When the reporters left, he’d go to the sideline.

Every week, Bucs defensive coordinator Monte Kiffin and the other coaches told Toriscelli there was no way he would play. Barber’s goal always was to practice on Friday because Kiffin had a rule that if a player practiced on Friday, he could play. So no matter what, Barber practiced on Friday.

That season, Barber made it through all 16 regular-season games, plus three postseason games. In the fourth quarter of the NFC Championship Game against the Eagles, he stepped in front of wide receiver Antonio Freeman and intercepted Donovan McNabb.

Then came the hard part. With his bad knee, Barber had to run 92 yards to score — that’s the picture on the office wall.

The @Buccaneers last played in the NFC Championship 18 years ago when Ronde Barber sent them to the Super Bowl. (via @nflthrowback)

📺: #TBvsGB — Sunday 3:05pm ET on FOX
📱: NFL app // Yahoo Sports app pic.twitter.com/Ehu0ac61fg

— NFL (@NFL) January 21, 2021

“He was kind of galloping,” is how former Bucs safety John Lynch put it.

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Toriscelli has one more injury to talk about.

In the 2011 season, Barber stuck out his arm to tackle Michael Turner. The shin of the Falcons’ running back slammed into Barber’s forearm, shattering it.

The Bucs were 4-11 at the time, and they were in the fourth quarter of the final game of the season. Despite the circumstances, Barber kept playing

Between series, Toriscelli asked to see Barber’s arm.

“That’s broke,” Toriscelli told him. But Barber insisted on finishing the game. The two of them ran to the training room, where Toriscelli cast the arm. Barber returned to finish. The following week, he had surgery to place an eight-inch plate and eight pins in his arm, which remain today.

There’s something that needs to be understood, Toriscelli tells the rookies. Given Barber’s size and style of play, his toughness was almost beyond comprehension. Barber was 5-foot-10. He usually started games weighing 183 pounds and ended them at maybe 178, which almost always made him the smallest man on the field.

Sometimes small defenders cash their checks with finesse, but Barber went after ball carriers like a guided missile.

He made 1,251 tackles in his career. According to Pro Football Reference, that’s the most in history by a cornerback. His 88 tackles for a loss are more than any cornerback or safety.

Lynch was one of the most feared hitters and consistent tacklers in pro football, and Barber learned to tackle by watching Lynch refine his technique in the end zone. Lynch took a long stride, a short stride, put his feet in a staggered position and then hit the goal post with his chest. That’s what Barber did, over and over. Then in a game, he’d hit the ball carrier the same way and often roll-tackle him.

Barber had to be a sure tackler because he frequently played nickel corner. He could be considered the first great nickel corner. And the way the Bucs used the nickel corner was to make him a smaller version of the strongside linebacker. That meant being responsible for gaps in the run game and being able to deal with offensive linemen looking to turn defensive backs into roadkill.

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Barber took on those players who weighed nearly twice as much as him and often got the better of them. He had different ways of doing it. Back then, it was legal to cut them and he did it well. Barber also would jump just before taking a hit from a big man. This would enable him to absorb a blow, land on his feet, then use his quickness to dart around the slower blocker.

And every so often, Barber would explode into a lineman caught in an awkward position. He did it against Vikings right tackle Chris Liwienski on a blitz. Lynch and his teammates still talk about seeing the 6-6, 325-pounder flying backward in the air after colliding with little Ronde.

Like his twin, Ronde had some freak in him. But he also worked exceptionally hard for his strength. In the offseasons, Barber put in a challenging 15 minutes of stair climber training before team workouts.

Toriscelli talks about the videos Barber showed him of the twins training in a small New Jersey gym during downtime. In an era when teammates were working out with rubber bands, the Barbers were doing lunges with 300 pounds on their backs. And during the season, Barber never skipped a lift. Then he followed his weight work with hundred-yard striders.

Later in his career, Barber extended his usefulness through muscle activation therapy. Then he learned from Lynch how to warm up with Egoscue, which restores balance and symmetry without undue straining and stretching.

It helped Barber play at a high level until he was 37 — four years after he first seriously contemplated retirement.

Toriscelli emphasizes this — Barber’s longevity mostly was the result of mindset. Ronde, the supposedly less gifted twin, was the first Barber to be a Pro Bowler, first All-Pro, and now he will be first in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.

He became the player Lynch talks about in the 49ers’ draft meetings as the model for toughness.

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That photo is on the wall of Toriscelli’s office because he wants the Titans to know what toughness looks like.

And this is how he wraps up his story.

“I’ve been around a lot of good ones, thousands of players,” he will say. “But he’s the toughest human being I’ve ever been around. I know what the human body is capable of because I worked with Ronde Barber.”

(Top photo: Al Messerschmidt / Getty Images)

The Football 100, the definitive ranking of the NFL’s best 100 players of all time, goes on sale this fall. Pre-order it here.

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