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.”
“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.
