Somehow, Russell Wilson and Daniel Jones have proven to be two of the most productive quarterbacks of the 2025 regular season through the first two weeks, and it’s breaking people’s brains. Conventional wisdom has been thrown out the window, and now, it seems as if one of the game’s greatest signal callers is now willing to follow suit.
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The former face of the New England Patriots, Tom Brady, recently made headlines by suggesting that everyone needs to stop making the mistake of “…assuming that everyone knows how to develop a quarterback.”
“There’s a lot of people that have no idea what they are doing when they are tasked with coaching a quarterback or calling an offense,” Brady suggested during a recent media appearance. And he’s not the only former great and retired QB who is preaching this.
During the most recent episode of his 4th & 1 podcast, the 2015 regular season MVP proclaimed that “resume fillers” have become all too prominent. According to Newton, that’s only going to hinder the overall product as time goes on.
“Coaches, nowadays, are benefitting more off of player success more so than players benefitting off of the development of good coaching…Just because you’re a great position coach, does not mean that you’re a great unit coach, meaning coordinator…..May I coach Josh Allen? May I coach Lamar Jackson?….That’s why I believe I’m a valid option for an offensive coordinator…And just because you’re a great unit coach, or a great coordinator, does not necessarily mean that you’re going to be a great head coach.”
Perhaps a perfect example is Liam Coen, the newfound head coach of the Jacksonville Jaguars. A descendant of the Sean McVay coaching tree, Coen was a hotshot offensive coordinator who managed to help revitalize the career of Baker Mayfield in Tampa Bay.
After he was able to help the Buccaneers produce a top-five scoring season in 2024, he was immediately fielding head coaching offers. To Newton’s credit, it only took years of being a play caller for Coen to become a head coach, making him one of the least experienced HCs in recent memory.
In the eyes of the former Carolina Panther, however, becoming a head coach in record time, while impressive, suggests that you’re better at politicking than you are at development. In other words,
“Coaches ain’t developing players in the league because they don’t have to. When we draft you, we not gonna teach you how to catch. We not gonna teach you how to throw… You should already be equipped with these things. We just need to teach you our system.”
Simply put, the current state of the NFL is seeing ‘tempo’ being favored over ‘teachings.’ So long as that is the case, then franchises will continue to find themselves releasing quarterbacks who couldn’t produce, only to then see them produce for another team down the line, just like the former New York Giant, Daniel Jones.
