There is certainly no shortage of words that can be used to describe the NFL.
Would ‘mediocre’ be a suitable and fitting description of the league, though?
Seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Brady thinks so. Speaking to Stephen A. Smith Monday on Smith’s radio show, Brady sounded off about the state of the league.
“I think there’s a lot of mediocrity in today’s NFL. I don’t see the excellence that I saw in the past,” Brady said. “I think the coaching isn’t as good as it was, the development of young players isn’t as good as it was. The rules have allowed a lot of bad habits to get into the actual performance of the game,” he continued.
Brady went further into his point, mentioning how players, especially on defense, in years past would have been penalized way more in today’s NFL. “I look at a lot of players like Ray Lewis and Rodney Harrison and Ronnie Lott and players that impacted the game in a certain way, and every hit they made would have been a penalty. Why don’t coaches talk to their players about how to protect themselves? We used to work on the fundamentals all the time, but now they’re trying to be regulated all the time.”
While Brady makes some good points, it’s worth noting that he and the New England Patriots were the benefactors of plenty of favorable calls during his time in New England, especially in the later years.
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