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Tom Brady Calls Today’s NFL Mediocre

Isiah Wardlaw / NFL / November 22, 2023

Tom Brady NFL — Tom Brady was recently vocal about his feelings toward today’s NFL, and he was not happy. (Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports)

Tom Brady Calls Today’s NFL Mediocre

Tom Brady knows a thing or two about playing in the NFL with 335 games to his name. The seven-time Super Bowl champion and 21-year vet recently expressed his frustration with the new era of football.

“There’s a lot of mediocrity in today’s NFL,” Brady said on “The Stephen A. Smith Show.” “I don’t see the excellence that I saw in the past.

“The coaching isn’t as good as it was. I don’t think the development of young players is as good as it was. The rules have allowed a lot of bad habits to get into the actual performance of the game. The product, in my opinion, is less than what it’s been.”

Brady recalled his playing days and talked about how soft the league has become. He has a particular issue with how the league’s new rule changes encouraging player safety have affected the games.

“I look at a lot of players like Ray Lewis and Rodney Harrison and Ronnie Lott, guys that impacted the game in a certain way,” Brady said. “Every hit they would have made would have been a penalty. You hear coaches complaining about their own players being tackled. Why don’t they talk to their player about how to protect themselves? We used to work on the fundamentals of those things all the time. Now they’re trying to be regulated all the time.”

“I think there’s a lot of mediocrity in today’s NFL” – @TomBrady pic.twitter.com/xyZ1q3ztUg
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) November 21, 2023

The NFL has frequently updated its rules to protect offensive players–particularly quarterbacks–in recent years.

“Offensive players need to protect themselves,” Brady added. “It’s not up to a defensive player to protect an offensive player. A defensive player needs to protect himself. I didn’t throw the ball to certain areas because I was afraid players were gonna get knocked out. That’s the reality. I didn’t throw it to the middle when I played Ray Lewis because he’d knock them out of the game, and I couldn’t afford to lose a good player.”

There have been a total of 70 roughing passer penalties called this year, according to nflpenalties.com, and it’s only Week 12. There were 93 in 2022 and 154 in 2021–compared to 69 in 2009 and 79 in 2011.

Roughing the passer penalties is outrageous in today’s NFL, and Brady is mistakenly known as a player to have quote-on-quote “inspired” a rule change protecting quarterbacks.

The so-called “Brady Rule” prohibits defensive players who are on the ground from “lunging” at a quarterback’s legs. Many believe the rule’s creation came after the ACL tear that sidelined Brady for the entire 2008 season. However, that rule was actually created after Bengals quarterback Carson Palmer suffered the same fate as Brady in a playoff game against the Pittsburgh Steelers in 2006.

Player Safety Concerns:

Player safety has been a hot topic this season, with many around the league concerned about turf vs, grass, hip drop tackles, roughness penalties and more. The league suspended Denver Broncos safety Kareem Jackson on Monday for four games without pay for an illegal hit on Minnesota Vikings quarterback Joshua Dobbs. It’s the second time Jackson has received a four-game ban this season, though his first suspension was later cut to two contests.

What’s ridiculous is the issue surrounding the hip-drop tackle. The NFL is considering banning hip-drop tackles. The play gained attention recently after multiple hip-drop tackles by Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Logan Wilson injured Baltimore Ravens players, including tight end Mark Andrews.

First Take idiot Bart Scott left Ryan Clark in utter astonishment as he labeled Logan Wilson as a dirty player.

Ryan Clark was in disbelief when Bart Scott blamed the Mark Andrews injury on "a dirty style of tackling." pic.twitter.com/vNZvBnGYxl
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 17, 2023

Bart should know better than anyone how hard it is to bring an NFL athlete down to the ground. To call someone dirty for trying to make a football play is insane. It’s exactly what Tom Brady is talking about when it comes to the league’s softness nowadays.