by 
Tom Brady is right.
The NFL is a bunch of bad football so far this season.
Thursday night’s stinker between the Indianapolis Colts and Denver Broncos was Exhibit A.
The Colts’ 12-9 overtime win was so raunchy that even the biggest NFL fan had to turn to cable for a Golden Girls marathon on the Hallmark Channel. Neither team could score a touchdown.
But those things were actually common in the first four weeks of the season.
The games have been filled with silly mistakes, misplaced offenses, poor coaching decisions and horribly blown leads in games that should have been over.
“There’s a lot of bad football out there from what I’m watching,” Brady told the media Thursday before the game. “I see very bad football. Poor quality football. This is what I see.”
Brady must know bad football. His Tampa Bay Buccaneers are coming off a rough 2-2 season and have struggled for 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 go back. You don’t play well in the third position. You don’t score points in the red area. It’s all the same stuff. Things you’ve gone to work on.”
But many of the things Brady has been touting continue throughout the league.
Blame the NFL for these disasters.
There are a few factors that must be a reason.
A) Teams don’t train as much as they used to. something that had been agreed upon during the last CBA.
B) Some coaches don’t have their star recruits or star players participate in any preseason games.
C) Greedy owners got rid of a preseason to get paid in an extra regular season game.
D) There are some coaches who are definitely in over their heads and have bad games that should be easy to maneuver around. Colts-Broncos primetime on Amazon was ridiculously bad on offense – almost unnoticeable.
At one point in the first half, there were five punts in a row – four of them were three-and-outs. The halftime score was 6-3, Denver.
Who was putting?
It definitely felt like a baseball game, not football where teams throw almost every down and coaches do it all the time like they’re playing Madden.
At halftime, the Colts had 144 total yards. The home team, Broncos, had a paltry 103. Denver was 2-for-7 on third down, while the Colts were 3-for-8.
It was a pity party, for sure.
Sure, a league would like to have parity – where all teams have an honest chance to win and it’s not just the haves and have-nots.
But you want quality football along the way. This mess doesn’t make a fan feel good about their team and give them hope that they can get through the postseason playing poor quality football.
It’s not just bad teams playing badly. Some really good teams have played badly too. 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 played terrific football and blew huge double-digit second-half leads in Miami and Buffalo. Easily, the Ravens should be 4-0.
Denver’s first-year coach is so bad he already has a nickname: Nathaniel “I Can’t” Hackett.
And quarterback Russell Wilson hasn’t helped at all. He was supposed to be the savior. Everyone thought all Denver needed was a star QB to match their defense. The recipe was supposed to get them to the Super Bowl.
But Wilson has been dumb so far. Somehow, he didn’t have a TD Thursday night. “It’s not just about him,” Hackett said of Wilson after the game. “It’s in all of us.”
And the stench of bad play is seemingly throughout the NFL.
As if that game wasn’t bad enough, wait until next Thursday night when the primetime matchup will be the lowly Washington Governors at the woeful Chicago Bears. Bet it down. NOW!
Just terrible.
