Former QB Tom Brady says 'coaching in league isn't as good as it used to be'

Former NFL star Tom Brady has lambasted the league for the decline in quality of players' development and poor coaching as well. Brady, who retired last year after a record 23-year-long career, made the comments on November 20 on The Stephen A. Smith Show.The majestic quarterback also said that the league is less than what it's been in the past.

"I think the coaching isn't as good as it was," Brady said. "I don't think the development of young players is as good as it was. I don't think the schemes are as good as they were.

"The rules have allowed a lot of bad habits to get into the actual performance of the game. So I just think the product in my opinion is less than what it's been."

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"I think there's a lot of mediocrity in today's NFL. I don't see the excellence that I saw in the past," he added.

Brady also pointed out that frequent rule changes to help protect the players from injury have left the fundamentals of protecting yourself behind.

"I look at a lot of players like Ray Lewis and Rodney Harrison and Ronnie Lott and guys that impacted the game in a certain way -- and every hit they would have made would have been a penalty [today]," Brady said. "You hear coaches complaining about their own player being tackled and not necessarily -- why don't they talk to their player about how to protect himself? ... We used to work on the fundamentals of those things all the time. Now they're trying to be regulated all the time."

The former New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers QB also said that there aren't many programmes in the country at the college level which are preparing players for the league.

"I actually think college players were better prepared when I came out than they are now," he said. "Just because so many coaches are changing programs, and I would say there's not even a lot of college programs anymore. There's a lot of college teams, but not programs that are developing players."

Notably, Brady is NFL's all-time leader in passing yards and touchdowns to go with his record seven Super Bowl rings.