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.”
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Pre-snap motion is a QBs best friend. It baffles me that so many offenses don’t use this cheat code on more snaps.
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.
It’s a huge reason the Phins have had a great offense this season (besides the cheat code that is Tyreek Hill).
Defenses HATE him for using this one simple trick.
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.