When Tom Brady said that there’s “a lot of mediocrity” in today’s NFL, some were confused and debated his point.
The Patriots icon further explained what he meant in the latest episode of his “Let’s Go!” podcast, focusing more on the inability of quarterbacks to read defenses and check out of plays at the line of scrimmage. As Brady was discussing how well of a game the Eagles’ overtime win over the Bills was, Jim Gray (one of Brady’s co-hosts) asked him why we don’t see as many games as intense or as well-played as that one, calling back to Brady’s “mediocrity” comment.
“I think the point is, you want to see the game continue to grow and evolve,” Brady said. “That means better coaching, better quarterback play, and better defensive playcalling. I think a big difference too is the lack of time that coaches have with players, coaches have together in the building, people don’t understand the full picture a lot of the time.”
As Brady said that players at most positions only need to know how to do a few things well, he explained that quarterbacks “need to know what everyone is doing.” But he doesn’t think quarterbacks in the league now necessarily know as much as they should, placing some of the blame on coaches because they’re trying to “control the game from the sideline.”
“When you try to control the game from the sideline, you don’t have the answer for everything that’s happening on the field,” Brady said. “Ultimately, as a quarterback, I had all the things at my disposal to get us into a good play. … I had the ability to change the play to get us to a play that I thought would be more successful.
“I just don’t see as much of that in the NFL,” Brady added. “There’s a lot less time that people are spending on it. That’s just the reality. When I started, there was a lot more time we spent on it. Over those years, I developed a lot of those tools in my arsenal to get us into the best play.”
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Brady said that his ability to check out of bad plays at the line of scrimmage helped him win Super Bowls and made other quarterbacks, such as Peyton Manning, Drew Brees, and Philip Rivers, great. Now, he thinks that only Patrick Mahomes, Aaron Rodgers, Matthew Stafford, and maybe a couple of other quarterbacks have the ability to check plays at the line of scrimmage.
Brady laid blame on the constant pressures of getting things right in the league for the lack of quarterbacks in the league today who are able to check out of plays at the line scrimmage, saying “in an effort to get it right, people are actually getting it more wrong.” As he thinks it’s particularly affecting young quarterbacks, he recalled that being able to spend time with the Patriots’ coaching staff during the offseason helped him check out of a play that led to an overtime win over the Chargers in his third career start.
“We were talking about how they were going to max blitz us,” Brady said. “We said, ‘OK, if they max blitz us and they get us in that look, we’ve got to check the protection to a seven-man protection, and let’s get the receiver a shot down the field.’ [They said that] to a second-year quarterback!
“I was in the system my whole first year. I was being taught by Bill Belichick and Charlie Weis. We had quarterbacks school and the offseason program. We get into overtime after going the full 60 minutes and I recognized they called this all-out blitz. I said, ‘[Expletive] this, I’m changing it.’ I changed the protection, I threw a deep ball to David Patten, pass interference and we got a 50-yard gain. We win the game on a field goal in overtime.”
Instead of seeing quarterbacks doing what he did at the line of scrimmage throughout his whole career, Brady believes there are too many quarterbacks and teams being “reactive” and trying to fix problems after the snap.
“The more you can be decisive as a quarterback, the better outcomes you’re going to have, the better your process is going to be,” Brady said. “You want to be really decisive as a quarterback. You want to be really sure of what you’re doing. But you need to be sure of the gameplan, the protections, who’s responsible for who if they blitz, and where all of the receivers are going. All of that takes time. We’ve got to allow these guys time to develop.
“The pro game is reflecting what the college game is as opposed to the college game reflecting what the pro game is,” Brady added. “We’re asking pro players to play college football. That’s the biggest difference I see. It’s way more checkers than it is chess. I tried to play chess. I wanted to have three moves ahead of you at all times.”
I mean even in Brady’s era there were still only a handful of QBs who had that type of mastery over the offense.
Also hasn’t the NFL emulated college football? It seems every trend that’s been popular in the NFL was used in college first.
This. They still had Joey Harringtons and David Carrs and J.P. Losmans in his era.
Alex Smith doesn’t understand the game at this depth Tom since he’s so mediocre
He’s not really all that wrong. The game is not evolving because of all the nepotism hires who don’t belong in that position, as well as the conservative nature of owners who are quick to cut ties with someone who tries new things. But he won’t say any of that.
Nothing he’s saying is really wrong here, especially with the extra detail.
The flip side is that guys with as much command of the offense and awareness of the defense as Brady, Peyton, Brees, etc. are the exception and not the rule.
Like the extraordinary thing is that those guys all played in the same era, not that even really good QBs like Allen and Dak can’t be more like those guys.
Fair point. Whether you call it “mediocrity” or not, the qualities you see in the top QBs today are certainly different from Brady’s peak. Way more guys relying on athleticism, and fewer of the “field general” types who get by on taking and manipulating what the opposing defense is doing. Anecdotally it seems like it’s far more rare to see guys check out of bad plays but maybe that’s because I’m watching a lot of Mac Jones :(
At the end of the day you’re going to do whatever it takes to win games, and if you’ve got a QB with a cannon and a guy that can outrun everyone it’s stupid not to take those shots. It is different than a Brady or a Manning dissecting opposing defenses though.
I wonder how much of the “bad oline” epidemic is caused by QBs not reading defenses as much at the line. I believe Rodgers hinted at that when talking about the giants against either the cowboys or seahawks this season, obviously their oline is bad but it doesn’t help if QBs aren’t able to recognize what’s going on. It has to increase the demand for offensive linemen.
The thing is “field general” is something that comes with experience. Right now the NFL QB landscape heavily skews young. Notice how out of the guys Brady mentioned, Mahomes is the only guy who hasn’t been in the NFL for over a decade. Of course, guys like Rodgers and Stafford are magical pre-snap because they’ve pretty much seen everything.
Subtext: Brady checked out of a lot of shit McDaniels play calls.
McDaniels called both plays. If Brady didn’t like the look, he checked to the second play. The idea that QBs can audible into any play at the line of scrimmage at any time is essentially a myth. (It does happen on rare occasions)
As disgusting as it is to say/think; the longer Brady has been away from all these “guru” coaches, the more I think they were all carried by this one dude that transcended the position and sport.
McDaniels takes all the credit when brady audibled out of a train wreck, but blamed brady anytime a play fell apart instantly
He saw the 50th screen that quarter and said no sir
He literally was in the league last year, and played about as mediocre as some of the QBs this year. Good lord. You would think he’s been away a TV and the league for 20 years and Patriots/Giants was the first game he saw.
People that say checkers is a simple game don’t really know how to properly play checkers
Checkers is a solved game dude
Hasn’t it been solved for over 15 years? Compared to a game like chess which has a lot of teams of really smart people working on engines with no end in sight.
The only thing I think is missing from this is that defenses have gotten even better in recent years about disguising looks pre-snap and rotating into different looks at the snap. Coaches that aren’t using a good amount of motion to try to reveal coverages pre-snap are doing their QBs a huge disservice.
No, none of you people get it. MOTION IS THE PROBLEM. All the Shanahan offenses that rely on a lot of motion is exactly what Brady is talking about when he says “coaches trying to control the game from the sideline.” It takes all of the burden of reading defenses off guys like Brock Purdy so that Shanahan can control the game with his play combos. (But that’s also why Shanahan’s offense always falls apart in the playoffs, eventually he runs into a defense that isn’t fooled by his tricks once they have enough film.) This is the style of offense taking over the nfl because it yields such quick results, but it’s also a crutch that handicaps qbs development. Motion is built into these new offenses to make things as simple as possible for qbs. But that means those qbs never learn advanced quarterbacking which used to be the standard in the nfl.
Ask Peyton Manning or Aaron Rodgers or any of these top level qbs, they all avoid motion because they know how to read defenses better without it. Motion forces the defense to move, which muddies some of the details that high level qbs care about. But playing at that level requires insane amount of film study and attention to detail that most people aren’t cut out for. I don’t blame these young guys for not wanting to work a lot harder at a silly frivolous game when they’re already making tons of money regardless. But that’s the state of the nfl and that’s why the game is getting worse.
I mean he won a Super Bowl 3 years ago and only retired before this season, I don’t think he’s so far removed from the game that he doesn’t understand modern defenses.
Yep, this is it right here. After the 2020 Covid/no crowds season when offenses lit the world on fire, defenses evolved. They got on the analytic train as well and finally emphasized defending against the pass more than the run.
For the longest time, all you ever heard about from defensive coaches was needing to stop the run. But passing is and always has been more efficient, mostly because it’s easier to get explosive plays in the passing game.
So defenses started playing the famous 2 deep shell and limiting those explosive plays. Offenses around the league had a crisis of identity. Average depth of target fell, and rushing efficiency rose. Defenses finally said “we’ll let you run”.
But defenses didn’t stop there. They’re still evolving with things like mentioned above, rotating coverages post-snap, something that Belichick himself famously did to Goff and the Rams in the Super Bowl to completely shut them down. This year even rushing efficiency has come back down from where it was last year. Defenses are just playing better right now and it’s on the offenses to adjust. So in that sense Brady is correct, but also the dynamics between offense and defense are very different than they were for much of his career (also during which offenses significantly evolved).
Linebackers and safeties are becoming so versatile that you can disguise a shit ton lining them just off of where they should be to make the rest of the read reliable. I have to agree with Alex Smith. Brady had the privilege of playing with good to great rosters and in a terrible division. Playing at a disadvantage to DEs isn’t something he had to do often so of course it seemed more cerebral.
I’d argue the real problem is teams are really unwilling to run the football. There are only 2 teams with 50% or more rushing attempts, San Francisco and Baltimore. The bottom 1/4 are below 40%. There are only 6 teams above 45%. There have been 50 different starting QBs this year. You would think that a few teams would start trying to line up in I formations (this includes strong, weak, all kinds of WR and TE formations, etc) and just run the football more against these defenses that are built with more pass rushers and smaller LBs.
I think this is going to be the next big debate in NFL statistics/gameplanning. The problem is that even the worst passing teams average as much/more yards per pass attempt than the best rushing teams average per rush. A team like the Panthers is only averaging 4.2 NY/A passing, but they’re also only 3.8 YPC rushing.
You do absolutely need to be able and willing to run the ball, but I think right now it’s hard for teams to figure out the right balance between the inherent inefficiency of running the ball with the need to keep the defensive line honest.
Pre-snap motion is a QBs best friend. It baffles me that so many offenses don’t use this cheat code on more snaps.
Defenses HATE him for using this one simple trick.
It’s a huge reason the Phins have had a great offense this season (besides the cheat code that is Tyreek Hill).
Funny thing is this is Matt Canada’s signature move
Information only helps if the QB knows how to use it though, which I think Tom is alluding to. Not every QB knows what to do with that information.
Darius Butler explained it pretty well on PMS. He was talking about how just one step in the NFL can make or break a play. How WRs will plant a leg and it’s up to the DB to know the player and route.
I’m not explaining it nearly as well as he did but it was interesting watching his body language as he demonstrated it.
Brady makes good points and Aaron Rodgers mostly agreed. It’s a tough ass sport and league. I mean we’re seeing the greatest coach ever only win two games this year. It’s wild.
This is my main complaint with the Bengals offensive scheme. Swallow your pride and spend this off-season reviewing how Miami utilizes all their offensive threats. There’s really no reason to not have these talented receivers in motion, particularly when the team was relying on short passes when Burrow’s calf was injured.
Ive always been interested in the chess game between defenses and offenses but never knew much into it aside from little more than baseline level.
I have noticed that we have a motion guy on almost all of our plays, and correctly assumed that was to read the defense. Other than that though I dont really get what information you are getting.
If a guy follows the motion man that means it is man-man right? What if he is just shifting to a different zone? Or what if he moves over but actually plans drop back into the same zone, effectively faking the shift?
It’s hard to summarize it briefly, but yeah, it has to do with either following all the way across (usually means man, or at least some form of man), or watching the way they shift to hopefully learn something about the zone they’re playing.
How to handle motion while still disguising coverage is just another move in the game of chess for the defense.
Doug P exposing the Eagles secondary last year was huge for the Chiefs in the SB imo.
Motioning the WR several times to see how those defenses react is definitely elite.
Go fuck off and play golf Brady
Josh Allen will never win a ring
I mean we also have a ton of younger qbs starting in the league right now
“When you try to control the game from the sideline, you don’t have the answer for everything that’s happening on the field,” Brady said.
This Shanny’s biggest flaw. When his game plan works he rolls to an easy win. If it doesn’t work due to the D countering it or a key injury he has no Plan-B and isn’t very good at thinking on his feet. He also plays not to lose, sits on small leads and has poor clock management and doesn’t seem to understand the emotional dymamics of a game thus the 4th quarter fades.
Tell me more
Shanny is a great play designer and great OC (IF things go according to plan) but not yet a good headcoach. A HC is not a glorified OC because the HC needs to monitor the pulse of the team, rally them when they are down or calm them when they are amped and teach them both on and off the field. The HC also needs to actually watch the game (O and D) and see who is beating who on the field to know where to attack in crunch time. As it is Shanny has his nose in the playbook trying to scheme his way to a SB win but that is not how it works.
In short, Shanny does not yet realize or can’t accept that players win games, not the coach, usually via unscripted and unexpected plays that aren’t on his play sheet. Apparently he is known to be stubborn, defensive and a my-way-or-the-highway type and his ego can’t acknowledge this fact.
Thanks!
I remember Kubiak another Shannahan disciple(and the coach who Kyle was first OC under) would have a strict set of 15 plays to start the game and would under no circumstances deviate from them.
Something else shanahan is particularly bad about is calling pick plays in crucial situations then acting incredulous if he gets called for OPI.
Kyle Shanahan also looks like Adam Sandler
Pick plays are just kind of part of the Shannahan system though. Its part of how they scheme WRs open get so many easy throws for QBs.
If it doesn’t work due to the D countering it or a key injury he has no Plan-B and isn’t very good at thinking on his feet.
This was entire problem as the Offensive Coordinator in Super Bowl LI. If Shanahan had called a slightly more conservative offense in the secnod half, had more running plays and high percentage passes, the Pats probably wouldn’t have been able to complete their comeback. But he had to stay in downfield attack mode, which had a a higher chance of turnovers and penalties, and ultimately resulted in a few short drives.
That’s funny, I somehow read Shanny as “Sean”, assuming I was in the Bills subreddit or something. It fits almost perfectly for McDermott too
Go figure, the most successful player in NFL history seems to know what he’s talking about. Shocking.
He’s only the most successful player of all time because of his weak division, though!
And yet the currently most upvoted comment in this post is trying to explain how he is so far removed from the game that he doesn’t understand a modern defense.
I think it’s more of a defensive reflex to the whole “Things used to be better” kind of comments.
Yep Tom Brady, who led the league in passing yards and passing touchdowns 2 years ago at 44 years old, could never hope to understand a modern defense lmao gotta love r/nfl, the same sub that voted Brady 101st best player in the league
I’m shocked I tell you, shocked…
back in my day
Every line of this makes Tom Brady sound decades old, he might as well have picked the wrong Holy Grail cup, because he’s aging away into dust in mere seconds.
You thought this was funny?
…Too soon? What you are upset about?