Every year, we are fascinated by what we will get from the NFL’s vaunted rookie quarterbacks. We debate and examine them, doubt them and project them. It’s all an effort to anticipate what they might be – or, more often than not, it cannot be – on the next level.
In some ways, this is the welcome that awaits elite NFL players making the transition to the broadcast booth. Can they be efficient? Will they understand the fundamentals of the job? Can they carry skills from one landscape to another? Can they “wow” us? And perhaps most important of all: can they be great?
For the first time in decades, Tom Brady faces these questions again.
In about three months, we’ll start to get answers when Brady steps into the booth for his first game as an NFL analyst on September 8, taking the lead for Fox in a season-opening matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and Cleveland Browns. This will be the moment the seven-time Super Bowl winner officially begins his football career. after his football career, definitely giving the first crack at a pressing question: What will be the next iteration of Brady?
Of course, the journey through his “gap year,” from game days to the stand, didn’t happen without a few crumbs along the way. There have been times when Brady has lamented the “mediocrity” he believes has invaded the NFL, as well as posting a critical comment on social media about the need for defenders to “play the ball in the right places” after Michael Pittman Jr. of the Indianapolis Colts tied the score on a less-than-ideal pass from Gardner Minshew against the Pittsburgh Steelers last season. For those who have been paying attention, Brady has demonstrated a willingness to share blunt opinions about the state of the league and his quarterback play, possibly foreshadowing what can be expected in his broadcasting career.
And he was no less candid on Wednesday when he spoke to Yahoo Sports while making the rounds for his next “Let’s go!” marketing partnership with Hertz, which starts this week. During the visit, Brady covered several topics, including reflecting on his year off between jobs and what might help New England Patriots quarterback Drake Maye as he enters the NFL as a rookie. And when the topic of quarterbacking in the NFL came up — and what the next 20 years of the position’s development would look like — Brady again got straight to the point.
“I think the quarterback has gone backwards a little bit in the NFL,” Brady told Yahoo Sports, just hours before he was inducted into the Patriots Hall of Fame. “I don’t think he’s improved. I don’t think teaching has improved. I think maybe the physical fundamentals could be improved a little because there is better information for defenders to study about mechanics. But I don’t think defenders are really field generals now like they used to be.
“It’s a broad statement, certainly. But I had complete control. I had all the tools I needed. I was trained that way. I was developed to have the tools I needed to go into the field, so that whenever something came up, I I had the right play, the right formation, the right sound, the right line check – to finally take control of the 11 guys on offense and lead us to a good, positive play.”
‘There is this element of attempted lateral control between coaches’
The experience Brady was enjoying at that moment wasn’t hard to understand. His story as a college player at Michigan — where he patiently learned under Brian Griese and then rose to the top of the depth chart and overcame a challenge from highly touted recruit Drew Henson — is a well-known part of Brady lore. . But what is now coming to the fore, and what could shape him as a critical analyst, is how his work ethic and standard as a defender took shape early in his career. His elite teammates, as young players, undoubtedly had much more autonomy at the line of scrimmage to run the offense as they saw fit. Think: Peyton Manning, Brett Favre, Kurt Warner, Steve McNair and others.
Now Brady sees more young quarterbacks entering the league from streamlined college offenses that are often canceled or tweaked on the sideline. He sees these same players entering some NFL buildings where teams are embracing the movement of controls away from the line of scrimmage and into the hands of a coach. At the same time, he sees less of an obligation to make quarterbacks grow and step out of their comfort zone while also taking on more responsibility. And that’s leading Brady to the opinion that things are getting worse at the position.
“I think there’s this element of trying to control on the sideline now among coaches, where they want to have control,” Brady said. “And they are not teaching and developing players the right tools so that they can enter the field and make their own decisions that best suit the team. When I looked at Peyton Manning, he was a guy I looked up to because he was in total control. And I think the game has regressed a little bit in that way, based on what’s happened in high school football, college football and the NFL, which is getting a much less developed quarterback at this point.
So what is the solution?
Well, Brady sees this as complicated and multi-layered. NFL quarterbacks can’t come into the league and demand control, much less be able to handle it, especially when the lower levels of football seem to have less linear learning processes than ever before. Unlike its growth path through high school and college in the 1990s, there are more “program jumps” at the position. Whether it’s elite high school football or the transfer portal in college, it’s becoming an accepted norm for quarterbacks — and even coaches — to pursue a symbiotic relationship that’s based on skill fit rather than development. of skills.
The result: It becomes more difficult for the NFL to advance to new levels of development, whether because players are less equipped to work and learn, or because they simply don’t have time to stray from doing what produces the quickest results. .
“It’s everyone’s fault,” Brady said. “It’s in the players, it’s in the coaches, it’s in the league, it’s in the colleges. Think about it: there is no more continuity. Not even in high school. Not even in college. There are no programs in development [quarterbacks] at the Faculty. They’re just teams now. So you play a year here, a year here, a year here. Well, how can you be good at anything in a job if you only work in one place for a year, then go to another place for a year, and then go to another place for a year?
“Coaches are doing the same thing,” Brady continued. “So they’re trying to develop a program and develop people, but they don’t have the time because of the pressure from social media and the media to fix it right away. So now they’re saying, okay – instead of recruiting a quarterback and saying I want to develop you – they’re saying, ‘Let’s recruit a quarterback and ask the quarterback, what do you do well?’ We just need to do this so I can try to win some games and not get fired.’”
Is this what we should expect from broadcaster Tom Brady?
It’s not Brady’s soft stance, or one made up for effect. When he talks about it, his belief resonates. And if this is where your career as an analyst is going, it will probably resonate with your audience as well. Not unlike the experience of watching Manning’s open-vein reactions during a weekly “Manningcast.” The value of the viewing experience is the acceptance of authenticity. And when Brady talks about quarterbacks now, that’s what he’s putting on the table. It’s how he sees his decades-long elite standing and where it is crumbling. Maybe it sounds like a nearly 40-year-old former player shouting to the clouds – but, well, sometimes the clouds are asking for it.
At the very least, what Brady appears to be provoking now is a scathing assessment of the quarterback from someone who wants the position — and the guys who play it — to strive for something better, rather than something that’s more convenient or stylish. of game. And that was something that came up when he talked about Maye, the third overall pick in April’s draft.
“I’m really lucky to be around him and I really like him,” Brady said of Maye. “I heard great things about him. But his opportunity will really be what he makes of it and how he wants to develop it and how he wants to attack his profession – as we all do. That’s not where you are when you’re 22. It’s who’s with you when you’re 22. Who inspires you to be better? Who develops you? I was very lucky. I look at my career, I was looking at other competitors like Peyton Manning, like Steve McNair, Vinny Testaverde was playing for [New York] Jets. Brett Favre was playing.”
“I was looking at quarterbacks that were unbelievable,” Brady said. “And I had coaches who were unbelievable. The competition was tough. My coaches were tough. I had to grow and develop. I would want those [young] guys have the same thing. I just don’t see it the same way I did back then [in my career]. I see less developed players, less developed coaches. They are no longer teaching. There is less time to teach. There are many reasons for this. … First of all, we have to become aware of it, and then we need to implement some things to make those changes.”
Most often, change is triggered through observation, conversation, criticism, and the actions that follow. Come September, Brady will be conveniently sitting in a prominent place at that crossroads. And the way he approaches this will go a long way toward answering what he will be like in his next football life.
