Quarterback play was a major weakness for many teams across the NFL this past season, and Tom Brady has identified one of the biggest reasons for that.
During the latest episode of his “Let’s Go!” podcast, Brady and fellow NFL legend Steve Young discussed some of the issues they have seen with young quarterbacks. At one point, Brady provided an excellent breakdown of how quarterbacks rely too much on coaches for playcalling rather than reacting to what they see from the defense before the snap.
Brady said he has seen too many quarterbacks snap the ball despite the play call being the wrong one for the coverage the defense is showing. The seven-time Super Bowl champion is annoyed that some of those QBs are then praised for taking off and picking up a chunk of yards on the ground when they should have changed the play at the line instead.
“The only problem I see in today’s quarterbacking, a lot of it, is the coach is trying to play chess, but the quarterbacks aren’t. The quarterbacks are snapping the ball and then they’re going, ‘OK, how do I react to what happened?'” Brady said.
“There’s no perfect play that can be called from the sideline on a consistent basis. They’re just calling probabilities. There’s a probability on 3rd-and-short, they’re gonna play man coverage. So, therefore, on my call sheet I’m gonna call my man-to-man beaters. Oh, s—, they didn’t call man-to-man, looks like a simple Cover 2 zone. This play isn’t really working for that. In my mind I’d be like, ‘OK, let me get to my best Cover 2 play against this look,’ as opposed to now we get the ball, ‘OK, we’ve got a bunch of crossing routes into Cover 2, that’s not good. Let me hold the ball and go run it.’ And then people on TV go, ‘Oh, great play, way to run.’ Im my mind, I’m going why did you snap the ball? I mean, you clearly knew no one’s gonna be open.”
You can hear the full comments below:
That is the type of commentary that fans will want to hear from Brady when he becomes FOX’s lead analyst next season. Brady recently said that he has been working hard toward perfecting his new craft.
The quarterback play across the NFL has dipped in recent years with guys like Brady, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees retiring. Some of those young signal-callers should listen to everything Brady has to say if they want to change that.
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