NFL

Defensive players just keep getting bigger and faster, some of the edge rushers in today’s game are just downright scary and if we let these guys tee off on quarterbacks like they did in the “old days” there are going to be a lot of quarterbacks on the shelf and we have recently seen how bad the league is when a lot of top quarterbacks are hurt. And all of these people saying that they’re not allowed to hit in football anymore apparently don’t watch the offensive line

Tom Brady can fuck right off. He said it's the offensive players responsibilities to get away from defensive players, when he got more protection from refs than any qb ive ever seen. If Ben, the mannings, Romo or anyone else got the protection Brady had they may not have gotten beaten up as bad as they had.

The audacity of this motherfucker is astounding.

Brady is the last one who should talk about softer rules ruining the game lol. He begged for calls when he played.

Football did have a golden age there for a while. They had to legislate a lot out of the game for safety reasons and it’s opened up a lot of the passing game, and much of it in a boring way.

The game is worse imo from an entertainment standpoint than that aughts period, but I still love football because it’s all about strategy still, but I miss how football used to be, sue me. But points aren’t inherently more exciting unless scoring is really low (like I love soccer but I get how people don’t like a sport unless they truly understand it if there isn’t more scores). Football has 9 or 10 scores a game.

The NBA suffers the same imo. I liked the game a lot more in the 90s and honestly thought the product was awful until the Warriors came along.

He’s entitled to his opinion. At some point, however, anyone who is inclined to complain about what the game has become needs to either shut up or stop watching it. They won’t be changing the rules to make the game less safe. Brady will be tilting at windmills if he chooses to use his Fox platform to whine about penalties against the defense and offensive players not protecting themselves.

He's qualified for his opinion too... unlike a career writer and sports journalist.

Seriously, if he has a problem with the rules, why would he want to call the games? Why not start a league that uses the rules that he wishes were still part of the NFL?

What an idiotic and disingenuous question. Maybe because he's actually qualified to talk about the game, he wants to influence it.

We can’t have it both ways. Either we want a safer game or we want open season. You can’t want a safe game and then whine about the impact of the efforts to make the game safer.

Yes you can... just like you can want to cross a river and argue the trade offs of various bridge designs. This dude is an absolute clown. Florio is clearly the product of nepotism.

Let's be honest, Brady's career would be VERY different without all the roughing the passers, unnecessary roughnesses, and the tuck rule helping him

I wish Tom Brady kissed me like he kisses his sons

Brady: Defensive players should be allowed to hit and tackle like how Ray Lewis did it.

Florio: BrAdY iS aN oLd MaN yELlInG aT tHe ClOuDs

Say whatever you want but he's not wrong. The NFL has skewed rules and changes to help offenses much more than defenses. I think SS and Jeff Saturday were talking about how they don't even teach some things to QBs because new rules don't let them get hit in certain ways so some skills are never needed to be taught.

Mike Florio would also like you to get off his lawn.

I'm so ready to not hear about Tom Brady anymore until he inevitably gets caught up in some(another?) hedgefund/techbro ponzi scheme.

I mean, it feels like he was playing before the invention of the forward pass so it makes sense.

A lot of the rules and the “soft” stuff stemmed from rules put in place to protect him in particular!!!!

"All the rules I repeatedly and loudly took advantage of should be taken away!"

I don’t think anyone besides owners want a safer league.

Everything Brady said is correct.

Tom is just mad he can’t make a play outside of the pocket

Sure fire sign that someone is getting old; they start complaining that things were better in their day.

I seem to recall a lot of pre-2000 quarterbacks complaining about how easy Tom Brady has it with all the new "protect the quarterback" rules.

He played for about a decade under the old rules. He played for about a decade under the new rules.

I'm not a Brady fan, oh how not a Brady fan I am, but he's like the most qualified person on the planet on this subject.

The main thing I got from this article is that Florio has finally accepted that Tom Brady is retired. It's like Kari Lake accepting that she lost.

Did this article really suggest Brady just start a league with rules he prefers if he dislikes the NFL’s? What a ridiculously written article all around. Brady is one year removed from the league and is clearly talking about the steady changes made to the game in the past couple decades. He didn’t mention wanting to make football less safe, which is all the author talks about. He just says he feels players aren’t taught to play in a way to keep themselves safe, rather they rely on questionably enforced rules for safety now.

What a garbage attempt at "journalism" this piece is. I could eat alphabet soup and shit out a better article.

To be fair, playing football with those cleats really does a number on the grass.

Florio has made a a career out of being a condescending old nag who complains about everything. He’s the last person who should be talking about this.

Brady is just saying the same thing vets told him when he was young. Those vets were just saying what the vets before them told them, and someday, Joe Burrow will say it to the next group of young guys.

Somehow, the past is always way better than the present, according to the people whose glory days were in the past.

"I should have been crippled by 40! Football's getting soft!" - Tom Brady, probably.

There are a lot of really bad calls and fines this year for very regular looking tackles, so I don't blame him for lamenting about the current product as a spectator this year.

The league is constantly chastised for changing the rules to protect players, and also constantly chastised for not giving a crap about player safety. It’s exhausting really.

He requested the most protection out of any QB past and present. He was the soft one. Would cry to the refs all the time if he got hit.

Modern football sucks honestly. My fear is it’s going to keep getting worse until it’s some weird variation of flag football.

Florio is something

“Modern football” dude like just retired basically

All this did was confirm my loathing of Florio. What a pompous doorknob.

If you don't like it, stop whining and stop watching? Wtaf?!

He needs to close his piehole, stand in front of his mirror and stare at himself longingly.

-Mister, can we have our ball back? -Hell no. [Deflates it] It's my ball now.

This headline is gold.

The reason there is a lot of mediocrity in the league is because QBs are way overvalued. Look at their contracts. They get special treatment. Its hard to find good QBs. The pro game is a lot different. Teams dont develop QBs for long enough. Teams dont give backups enough reps. Teams misevaluate. Bryce could be a pro-bowl player with all-pros surrounding him, given the right system and development. But there are so many teams that discard players so quickly and teams are incentivized to tank and get a great draft pick that could land you the next great QB. Its a system that is meant to uplift the bad teams. By doing so, there ends up being a lot of teams in the middle and at the bottom of the league. Reaching the top of the league requires the right people at every key position owner, gm, coach, qb, coordinators.

Same, my lawn is way too small to host an NFL game

He's not entirely wrong. Football kinda sucks lately. So much mediocrity, so many terrible quarterbacks. Feels like a whole lotta rebuilding is happening almost everywhere.

I aspire to get as wealthy by being as mediocre at my craft as Florio

Florio is such a fuckin bum

Football quality will likely continue to drop as youth enrollment continues to decline.

Don't we all

It’s still funny how mad Brady got about jersey numbers that one years