Tom Brady says NFL QBs playing as rookies is a ‘tragedy’: ‘We’ve dumbed the game down’

Just weeks from his debut as an NFL analyst on Fox, Tom Brady is finally ready to talk.

While Brady has openly worried about being too negative, he had no issue ripping the league for its player development system in an interview last week at Fanatics Fest in New York City.

Speaking with Stephen A. Smith in an interview that ran on Smith’s podcast Monday, Brady excoriated the NFL and its teams for letting down young quarterbacks by limiting their growth potential.

Brady notoriously did not rip through lower levels of football as a prodigy. He developed over time at Michigan and in New England before ultimately becoming the GOAT. He doesn’t believe that potential exists anymore, calling the quarterback pipeline a “tragedy” resulting from coaches and executives who have “dumbed the game down.”

“Five years (at Michigan), I got to learn how to drop back pass, to read defenses, to read coverages, to be coached,” Brady explained. “To deal with winning games, to deal with playing in Columbus, Ohio, in front of 110,000 people. I had to learn from being seventh QB on the depth chart to moving up to third to ultimately being a starter. I had to learn all those things in college, that was development.”

With the Patriots, Brady famously waited his turn behind Drew Bledsoe before finally getting the reigns in 2001 and winning his first Super Bowl. Now, Brady sees quarterbacks thrust into primetime right away because coaches want to make themselves look good or executives want to save their jobs.

“I think it’s just a tragedy that we’re forcing these rookies to play early, but the reality is the only reason why we are is because we’ve dumbed the game down, which has allowed them to play,” Brady said. “It used to be thought of at a higher level. We used to spend hours and hours in the offseason, in training camp, trying to be a little bit better the next year. But I think what happens is it discourages the coaches from going to deep levels, because they realize the players don’t have the opportunity to go to a deep level. So they’re just going to teach them where they’re at.”

Brady believes the reduction of practice time, which was implemented to reduce hits and physical wear and tear, hurts players who need to get better at the pro level. And because players’ ceilings have been lowered, Brady believes coaches put less on their plate, which in turn drops the quality of play overall across the league.

In particular with quarterbacks, Brady sees a lack of trust from coaches for quarterbacks to manage the game from the line of scrimmage like he did. Teams are more likely to run a play they know won’t work than empower a quarterback to learn to read the game, Brady told Smith.

Coaches benefit because they get credit when a scheme works, while inexperienced players get blamed for failure.

It’s a strong opinion that some may see as Brady building up his own mythology, but if it’s any semblance of how detailed and passionate Brady will be in the Fox booth, NFL fans are in for a treat this fall and beyond.

[The Stephen A. Smith Show on YouTube]