The current crop of QBs is not at the Brady/Manning level in general. I know neither of those two guys were the athletes that some of the current top guys are, but I imagine Manning and Brady having aneurysms seeing the carelessness with which a lot of the league treats the ball.
Mahomes, Hurts, Lamarr, even Tua and CJ Stroud. Herbert is very fun to watch. Even guys like Purdy and Geno are well worth the Sunday sit down. I think Brady was speaking more to lack of accountability due to rules that can create mediocrity. I also think mediocrity is the wrong word. The league has more talent than ever.
Are you taking Philip Rivers and Eli over the first three I named?
Not to mention Aaron Rodgers has played in both eras.
In general, these guys are such athletic freaks now, that they never learned to read a defense or really learned the game. They didn’t have to.
The QBs today only know the current way of playing (since 2004)…so it’s like playing on “Hard” mode. Brady, Manning etc., played on “Ultra Hard” mode to start their careers. Rules changes made it feel like “normal” mode.
Defensive players in today’s game are better than when Manning/Brady played because they play effectively even WITH all the handcuffs on defenders. They never had the old rules so there was no adjustment. The rule changes were from 19 years ago. Most top shelf defenders were somewhere between Pee Wee and middle school football at that point. Some guys were too young even for Pee Wee 19 years ago. All they know is modern ball so this feels normal for them.
TL;DR - old QBs had an advantage with the rule switch 19 years ago but modern QBs don’t have the advantage since modern defensive players only know one way to play
Charles Barkley says the same thing about the current state of the NBA. It’s just old retired guys jealous they can’t play anymore and nothing more.
