No one got the superstar whistle quite like Tom Brady did during his two-decade Hall of Fame career. He benefited greatly from pro-QB rules changes. Heck, they even outlawed the low blow on the QB because such a hit on Brady in 2008 cost him that entire season. However, since his retirement, he has been completely gone the other way.
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Brady has been very critical of the state of the quarterback in today’s NFL. He believes all of these rule changes made to help QBs are contributing to the stunting of their development. QBs aren’t taught to avoid throwing hospital balls anymore because the referees will ostensibly look after their receivers.
The New England Patriots’ great also believes that the way coaches are coddling young QBs has been detrimental to their progress. Instead of having players learn the playbook and the speed of the game slowly, they’re being thrown into the fire with dumbed-down playbooks. The coaching that quarterbacks are getting is one of the biggest factors in the bad play Brady has seen.
“There’s a lot of people that have no idea what they’re doing when they’re tasked with coaching a quarterback or calling an offense. … Do you rank offensive coordinators 1-32? Do you rank quarterback coaches 1-32? Well, what if you have the 32nd-ranked coordinator? … How is he getting a level of development that the guy who’s first is getting?”
While we often rank players and compare them to each other, we rarely do it with coordinators or coaches apart from the head honcho. And yet, those guys play a massive role in determining whether a QB turns into a quality starter or another has-been.
When Brady was a rookie in 2000, he sat behind starter Drew Bledsoe and was coached by QBs coach Dick Rehbein. Bledsoe was a consummate pro, and Rehbein had been coaching in the NFL since 1979. However, Rehbein passed away suddenly from a heart attack in August of 2001. That difficult loss led to an unorthodox rejigging of the staff from head coach and general manager Bill Belichick.
“The way that we found a way to continue on that season is Bill Belichick became more of a quarterback coach than we ever imagined him being a quarterback coach. He was obviously a head coach, very involved in defensive game planning. But he decided to come in every week and talk to the quarterbacks about coverage.”
Brady talked about how learning from an offensive perspective from guys like Bledsoe and offensive coordinator Charlie Weis was great. But the differing perspective he got from Belichick in 2001 and in subsequent years set him apart.
Brady also talked about how he would meet with more low-level staffers to go over specific player tendencies on the defense they’re playing next. It is perhaps that holistic style of QB development that some signal callers are missing out on in this age of efficiency and logic over all.
