Tom Brady thinks the new rules are hurting the NFL: What did the former QB say to Stephen A Smith?
While this isn’t the first time that the seven-time Super Bowl winner has criticized the state of the league, it may be that this is his most vicious attack yet.
Just because he’s no longer playing in the league doesn’t mean he’s about to stay quiet on what he thinks about it. Indeed, the people’s vote for GOAT just had a fair amount to say about the NFL and not much of it was good.
Tom Brady gives Stephen A. Smith his 2 cents on the NFL
If you caught Tom Brady’s recent appearance on ‘The Stephen A. Smith Show’, then you were probably left like the rest of us with the idea that he didn’t hold back when it came to airing his thoughts about the NFL today. Quite frankly, the former Patriots and Buccaneers star was brutal in his assessment of the league.
“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 don’t think the coaching is as good as it was. I don’t think the development of the young players is as good as it was. The rules have allowed a lot of bad habits to get into the actual performance of the game. I just think the product, in my opinion, is less than what it’s been.”
What did Tom Brady say about the NFL’s new rules?
Where things got interesting was when Brady took aim at some of the league’s new rules relating to player safety and the way in which they have - in his opinion - diminished the defensive aspect of the game. The 46-year-old who is now retired added that some of the defensive stars against whom he played would not be allowed to play in the league today in light of some of the alterations that the NFL has made.
“I look at a lot of players like Ray Lewis and Rodney Harrison and Ronnie Lott, guys that impacted the game in a certain way,” Brady said. “Every hit they would have made would have been a penalty. You hear coaches complaining about their own player being tackled. Why don’t they talk to their player about how to protect themselves? We used to work on the fundamentals of those things all the time. Now they’re trying to be regulated all the time.” Ultimately, there are two sides to this coin. On one, we’ve got the undeniable fact that Brady as a player who spent more than two decades in the NFL, is uniquely positioned to give comment on the league’s evolution. On the other, change is inevitable, and as we have seen with the rise in cases of CTE - just one example - the issue of player safety is one that should most definitely be taken seriously. Will the legendary quarterback’s opinion spark further tweaks to the NFL’s rulebook? Will it at least start the conversation about such things? Who’s to say, but for the moment we’ve definitely got food for thought.