Tom Brady is right.
The NFL is a bunch of bad football thus far this season.
Thursday Night’s stinker between the Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos was Exhibit A.
The Colts’ 12-9 overtime victory was so rancid that even the biggest NFL fan had to be searching cable for a Golden Girls marathon on the Hallmark Channel. Neither team could score a touchdown.
But this stuff has actually been commonplace over the first four weeks of the season.
Games have been filled with dumb mistakes, inept offenses, bad coaching decisions, and terribly blown leads in games that should have been over.
“There’s a lot of bad football from what I watch,” Brady told the media Thursday before this game was played. “I watch a lot of bad football. Poor quality of football. That’s what I see.”
Brady should know bad football. His Tampa Bay Buccaneers are off to a rocky 2-2 season and have struggled most of it, trying to get into the end zone from the red zone.
Brady, 45, and in his 23rd season, said it’s obvious why his team isn’t playing well.
“We look at the film and understand why,” he said. “You turn the ball over. You get behind. You don’t play well on third down. You don’t score points in the red area. It’s all the same stuff. Stuff you’ve gone to work on.”
But a lot of the stuff Brady is ranting about is going on league-wide.
Blame the NFL for these debacles.
There are a few factors that have to be a reason why.
A) Teams don’t practice as much as they used to; something that was agreed upon during the last CBA.
B) Some coaches don’t have their star quarterbacks or star players take part in any preseason games.
C) The greedy owners got rid of one preseason to get paid on an extra regular-season game.
D) There are a few coaches who are definitely over their heads and have botched games that should be easy to maneuver. The Colts-Broncos primetime on Amazon was ridiculously ugly on offense — almost unwatchable.
At one point in the first half, there were five punts in a row — four of them were on three-and-out drives. The score at the half was 6-3, Denver.
Who was pitching?
It definitely felt like a baseball game, not the football where teams throw on almost every down, and coaches go for it all the time like they are playing Madden.
At the half, the Colts had 144 total yards. The home team, Broncos, had a paltry 103. Denver was 2-for-7 on third down, while the Colt were 3-for-8.
It was a pathetic party, for sure.
Sure, a league would love to have parity — where all the teams have an honest shot to win and it’s not just the haves and have-nots.
But you want quality football in the process. This mess doesn’t make a fan feel good about their team and give them hope that they will be able to get through the postseason playing poor quality football.
This isn’t just bad teams playing badly. Some very good teams have played poorly as well. The Cincinnati Bengals, who went to the Super Bowl last season, are off to a terrible start. In the opener, QB Joe Burrow had more turnovers than a bakery — four interceptions and a fumble.
The Baltimore Ravens have played terrible football and blown huge second-half, double-digits leads to Miami and Buffalo. Easily, the Ravens should be 4-0.
Denver’s first-year head coach is so bad that he already has a nickname: Nathaniel “Can’t” Hackett.
And his quarterback Russell Wilson hasn’t helped at all. He was supposed to be the savior. Everybody thought all Denver needed was a star QB to go with its stud defense. The recipe was supposed to get them to the Super Bowl.
But Wilson has been a dud thus far. Somehow, he had no TDs on Thursday night. “It’s not just on him,” Hackett said about Wilson after the game. “It’s on all of us.”
And the bad-play stink is seemingly all over the NFL.
As if this game wasn’t bad enough, wait until next Thursday night when the marquee matchup in primetime will be the lowly Washington Commanders at the woeful Chicago Bears. Bet the under. NOW!
Just terrible.
