Tom Brady is not a fan. The winningest NFL quarterback of all-time believes the league made a losing decision to expand its regular season to 17 games.
Speaking on the “Let’s Go!” podcast he hosts with Jim Gray and Larry Fitzgerald, Tom Brady ranted on the season expanding from 16 games to 17 this year.
“I think it’s pointless,” Brady said on his podcast of the additional regular-season game. “I thought it was a terrible decision. So I don’t like the fact that we’re playing a 17th game at all. I think 16 is plenty. And, again, you’re eight games into the year and you’re not halfway through, so that’s kind of a little frustrating aspect. So whatever, I mean, we’ll play it. It’s there, you know, a lot of guys probably miss games over the course of the season anyway, so they probably don’t play all 16, most guys.”
The 17-game regular-season marks the league’s first schedule expansion since 1978. Many believe it will soon change to 18 games.
The option to expand the regular season was originally built into the CBA, but wasn’t exercised until the league signed a new media contract. NFL voters approved and finalized the change in March to add a preseason game and another regular-season game to the 2021-22 schedule.
Brady then criticized the relationship between the players, the union, and NFL owners. When asked why negotiations have been contentious, Brady said NFL owners “haven’t had to listen to the players.” He added that players have the option to not play, or play under the demands of the owners.
“The owners haven’t had to listen to the players,” Brady said. “Because usually what the owners want, the owners get. So, you know, that’s just the way the business has gone. And we need strong union leadership from the player standpoint and a unified union in order to have the right amount of leverage to negotiate what we think is appropriate for an NFL player. But right now it’s more like we get told what to do and, yeah, there’s a vote and a CBA, but the choice is: Don’t play or play under these circumstances. And we’ve essentially agreed to play under their circumstances.”
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He continued:
“It’s much easier to get 32 owners to agree who have all the information and they do regular quarterly meetings and they meet and they’re all interested in growing the game,” Brady said. “Which, look, the players want to grow the game as well but we want to grow it in a way that’s, again, that’s right for the players as well. So there’s not a lot of thought that goes into that and I don’t think the coaches are represented as well, either. I think there can be a much more constructive way of doing the right thing by all parties, if there were the right committees and right amounts of negotiation and, you know, I think it would actually make for a much better game.”
Brady was outspoken about rule changes during the offseason. He also took issue with the jersey number rule and urged other players to stand united in collective-bargaining talks.
He is 44-years-old and we don’t expect to see Brady in the league when it changes to 18 games. Then again, nobody expected him to be playing in the NFL right now.
