By Donovan West, Sports Editor
@DWest_courant
When Tom Brady said that there’s “a lot of mediocrity” in today’s NFL, the football world was set aflame. How could someone call the world’s most profitable sport mediocre? How could someone belittle the modern players that risk their lives every week in a game that is only growing more dangerous? But, when the greatest of all time says something, we are forced to listen.
Look around the current NFL: Nick Mullens, Jake Browning, Aiden O’Connell- all of them are starting quarterbacks that most people have never heard of. I mean when the starting quarterback for the New York Giants, Tommy Devito, lives with his parents, there might be a problem. Desmond Ridder is winning the NFC South. The lineage of legacy that has become the Green Bay Packers’ quarterback room has been passed to the underwhelming Jordan Love. Jared Goff and Brock Purdy are both borderline top ten quarterbacks in the league; a couple of years ago, those two would have been barely serviceable starters.
Now think about the quarterbacks ten years ago. A group led by Tom Brady, Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck, Drew Brees, Ben Roelthisberger and Russell Wilson all of which took their teams to the playoffs. These are NFL legends that are regarded as some of the best to ever play. And that’s not to mention other high-end starters like Joe Flacco, Andy Dalton, Eli Manning and Carson Palmer. We simply don’t have the same caliber of players in the modern NFL.
Furthermore, it seems that the worst teams in the league are worse than ever. The Panthers, Cardinals, Giants and Patriots headline a group of basement dwellers that is nothing more than pathetic. The recent game between the Patriots and Giants, finishing 10-7 via a missed field goal and a combined 14 punts, was a disgraceful product put on by the NFL. And unlike the NBA, whose worst teams feature young talent on the rise, like Victor Wenbanyama and the Spurs, the teams at the bottom of the totem pole in the NFL feature zero exciting talent.
And while you may think that the top-end talent of the NFL makes up for it, I really don’t know if it does. There is no clear Super Bowl favorite. There is no clear MVP favorite. The Eagles are tied for the best record in the league and have played in eight one score games and been blown out by at least twenty twice. We are no longer in an era of dominance.
The NFL has changed completely. The league no longer prioritizes pocket-passing deadeye quarterbacks that will carry their team to victory. It emphasizes play-makers and athletes. Tyreek Hill and Chrisitian McCaffrey have all risen to the pinnacle of the sport behind lightning speed and the ability to change the landscape of a game at any moment.
For years the NFL has been said to be a quarterback’s league. First round picks spent on Zack Wilson, Mac Jones and Trey Lance. 40 million dollars to Daniel Jones, a quarterback who has more career turnovers than touchdowns. Team owners and general managers have their sights set on obtaining the next great Brady or Manning- but they just aren’t out there. Maybe it’s just the current NFL regressing to the mean and the early 21st century was elite, but right now, it truly seems like an age of mediocrity.
