Less than a year into his storied career, Tom Brady is clearly not satisfied with the current level of play in the NFL.
“I think there’s a lot of mediocrity in the NFL today. I don’t see the excellence that I saw in the past,” Brady said Monday during an appearance on “The Stephen A. Smith Show.”
Brady, who retired earlier this year after a record-breaking 23-year career, cited numerous reasons for his evaluation of the sport, including coaching and player development.
“I don’t think the coaching is as good as it used to be,” Brady said. “I don’t think the development of young players is as good as it used to be. I don’t think the programs are as good as they used to be.
“Those rules allowed a lot of bad habits to get into the actual performance of the game. So I just think the product I think is not as good as it used to be.”
NFL scoring dropped for the fourth consecutive season in 2023; teams averaged just 43.3 points per game, down from 43.8 points last season and 45.9 points in 2021. The league is facing its lowest scoring season since 2009, when teams averaged 42.9 points per game.
One possible reason for the drop in scoring is the plethora of quarterback injuries. Joe Burrow, Kirk Cousins, Deshaun Watson and Anthony Richardson are the first in a growing list of franchise quarterbacks to suffer season-ending injuries, while others — including Aaron Rodgers and Kyler Murray — both out for significant amounts of time.
Brady acknowledged the physical intensity of the sport but lamented recent rule changes aimed at protecting players from injury.
“I look at a lot of players like Ray Lewis, Rodney Harrison and Ronnie Lott, and players who impact the game in some way – every hit they take is a penalty (today ),” Brady said. “You hear coaches complaining about their players getting tackled, but not necessarily — why don’t they talk to their players about how to protect themselves? … We used to work on the basics of these things. Now they’ve been Efforts are regulated.
“Offensive players need to protect themselves. Defensive players shouldn’t be protecting offensive players. Defensive players need to protect themselves… I think a lot of the way the rules work allows for that – you can basically play without worries. , and then if someone hits you hard, you get punished.”
Brady, 46, is the NFL’s all-time leader in passing yards and touchdown passes. The seven-time Super Bowl champion and three-time league MVP said he doesn’t think “athletes have changed that much” since he began his NFL career in 2000, instead pointing to developments at the college level.
“I actually think college players were better prepared when I came out than they are now,” he said. “Just because so many coaches are changing programs, I would say there aren’t even a lot of college programs anymore. There are a lot of college teams, but there are no programs to develop players.
“So when they get to the NFL, they may have the athleticism, but they don’t have a lot of the skills to be a pro. When I played at Michigan, I basically played in a college program that was very similar to In “Professional Environment. When I see these different players coming in, they’re not as prepared as they were before, and I think the game has shown that over the last 12 to 13 years. I think things have declined a bit. “