“I think there’s a lot of mediocrity in today’s NFL” – @TomBrady pic.twitter.com/xyZ1q3ztUg
— Stephen A Smith (@stephenasmith) November 21, 2023
Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback Tom Brady appeared on the Stephen A. Smith show on Monday, and he had a lot to say on the state of the game and the NFL.
The former Bucs quarterback was asked about how he sees the NFL now, and he had a very curt answer about it.
“I think there’s a lot of mediocrity in today’s NFL,” Brady said. “I don’t see the excellence that I saw in the past. I think the coaching isn’t as good as it was, I don’t think the development of young players is as good as it was.”
Brady attributed this mostly to how the rules in the NFL have evolved. He said that rules today are too harsh on defensive players and that offensive players have a responsibility to protect themselves, saying that players like Ray Lewis and Ronnie Lott wouldn’t have been able to play in today’s game.
“The rules have allowed a lot of bad habits to get into the actual performance of the game… you hear coaches complaining about their own player being tackled, and not necessarily, why don’t they talk to their player about how to protect themself? We used to work on the fundamentals of those things all the time.”
Brady himself was recently a part of the modern game, ending his career in Tampa Bay in 2022. In his three seasons with the Bucs, Brady threw for 16,655 yards, 123 touchdowns, 38 interceptions with a 65.8% completion percentage. He won his last Super Bowl with the Bucs in 2020, the second in the team’s franchise history.
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