Shannon Sharpe points out Tom Brady’s hypocrisy over ‘mediocrity’ comment despite agreeing with him

The analyst called him out for taking advantage of the very rules that he was out criticizing.

Shannon Sharpe points out Tom Brady’s hypocrisy over ‘mediocrity’ comment despite agreeing with him

(L) Tom Brady; (R) Shannon Sharpe (Via Imago/ESPN)

Tom Brady put the NFL on blast in his recent appearance on ‘The Stephen A. Smith show’ when he called the league out for being soft and said that there is a lot of “mediocrity” in the league today. His statements, while true, did bother a lot of people, one of whom is Shannon Sharpe, a former NFL player himself who is also in the Hall of Fame.

Shannon Sharpe clapped back at Tom Brady’s recent comments and responded to him by stating, 

Everything Tom Brady said is true but he also benefitted from those rules also.

Sharpe was referring to the league banning defensive players from hitting quarterbacks below their knees. The rule is infamously referred to as the ‘Tom Brady rul’e as it came into force after Bernard Pollard‘s hit on him in 2008.

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It was pretty odd considering that Brady is cited as the reason for the NFL to become pretty sympathetic with the QB and enforce rules that protect him. If not for some of the rules that TB12 helped bring in, he would not have been able to play in the NFL past 36.

There was a reason why it was impossible for QBs to play into their 40s before and that was because of the physicality of the game. However, it has become much easier to do that now.

Tom Brady had a pivotal role in the NFL’s enforcement of QB-friendly rules

Shannon Sharpe did agree with Tom Brady on his point that the NFL has become soft and the quality of quarterbacks in general has fallen. 

There's always been bad quarterback play in the NFL...you can't punish the quarterback now, you can't intimidate, you can't land on him, you can only hit him in his number.

Just take a look at the NFL from a decade ago to what it has become now. Being a defensive player is nothing short of a bane as the number of restrictions surrounding how they can take a quarterback down without being flagged for the play is being limited by the day.

Tom Brady Bernard Pollard
Tom Brady getting sacked by Chiefs safety Bernard Pollard in 2008 (Via AP)

It is ridiculous because football is by nature a violent sport, while nobody is advocating for a complete reversal of all rules in place to protect players from severe injury, it does not seem very practical to preach rules that lay down how a quarterback must be taken down.

In the heat of the game, a defensive tackle is not sitting there thinking how he must hit a quarterback legally. He is like a charging bull and the QB is the red flag. He just goes at him because that is his job, that is what he has trained for his entire life. Now, if you attempt to discipline the bull and instruct it to hit it from only one angle, it could be good but it will not be able to be great.

Sharpe concluded by stating that,

They run routes now that I never heard of...you would never ever run a one-step slant with Ray..."

If defensive players today were as physical as Ray Lewis and the rest back in the day, wideouts would not stand a chance against them. It would be knockout after knockout with receivers leaving the game one by one.

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