Tom Brady may have called time on his football career, but that hasn’t stopped him from keeping a close eye on the NFL this season. And the legendary quarterback isn’t particularly impressed with what he’s been seeing.
Speaking on a recent episode of “The Stephen A. Smith Show,” seven-time Super Bowl winner Brady was in a damning mood as he lamented the current standard of play in the NFL.
“I think there’s a lot of mediocrity in today’s NFL. I don’t see the excellence that I saw in the past,” he said.
Asked why he felt that way, Brady added: “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. I don’t think the schemes are as good as they were.
“I think the rules have allowed a lot of bad habits to get into the actual performance of the game. So I just think the product, in my opinion, is less than what it’s been.”
Brady, who retired from the NFL in February after a 23-year career with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, alluded to the increased scrutiny around roughing-the-passer – which is intended to protect quarterbacks from injury – and unnecessary roughness rules.
He found himself at the center of this debate last year when he benefited from a controversial roughing-the-passer call as the Bucs held on to beat the Atlanta Falcons.
“Guys are competitive. Guys play hard,” Brady said. “I look at a lot of [former] players like Ray Lewis and Rodney Harrison and Ronnie Lott and guys that impacted the game in a certain way and every hit they would have made would have been a penalty [today].
He added: “Offensive players need to protect themselves. It’s not up to a defensive player to protect an offensive player.
“A defensive player needs to protect himself … I think a lot of the ways that the rules have come into play have allowed this – you can essentially play carefree and then if anyone hits you hard, there’s a penalty. And it’s very different than when I was playing.”
The 46-year-old said that his teams used to work on the “fundamentals” of players not being tackled, but added that, in today’s game, “they’re trying to be regulated all the time.”
Brady retired from the NFL with a record number of Super Bowl rings. He also won more games and passed for more yards and for more touchdowns than any other player in the history of the league.
Too much regulation or protecting players?
Denver Broncos safety Kareem Jackson, who was suspended by the NFL for four games – later reduced to two on appeal – in late October after multiple unnecessary roughness violations, posted a video on X, formerly Twitter, of Brady’s interview in apparent support of the NFL legend’s comments.
Tuesday’s post came after Jackson was again handed a four-game suspension for repeated violations of player safety rules after a hit – which was not penalized during the game – on Minnesota Vikings quarterback Joshua Dobbs in Denver’s 21-20 win on Sunday night. The win was the safety’s first game back from his October suspension.
Commenting on the latest suspension, which Jackson can appeal, NFL vice president of football operations Jon Runyan wrote in a letter to the Broncos safety: “You could have made contact with your opponent within the rules, yet you chose not to.”
Former Super Bowl champion cornerback Richard Sherman, who defended Jackson after his previous suspension, responded to the new suspension and Brady’s comments, posting on X: “The product is suffering. Calling a player ‘dirty’ because he plays a physical brand of football that would have him on every highlight tape on every network when this game was great. Skewed the game so that players don’t have to be as skilled to be productive.”
