3 starting NFL QBs Tom Brady is probably still better than after flag football display

“Oh, what, the greatest quarterback of all time, who retired just three years ago, might still be better than some of the worst quarterbacks in the NFL? Please, Oliver, bless us with more of your brilliant insights!”

Listen. Rather than use Tom Brady’s admittedly glorious performance at the Fanatics Flag Football Classic to simply disparage the worst quarterbacks the NFL has to offer, I suggest a more worthy cause: use Brady as the universal solvent for bad quarterback play and figure out what certain teams are missing under center. With great sarcasm comes great responsibility.

Yes, they’d probably all benefit from any version of Brady, but the nuances of bad quarterbacking is a high art — you don’t just get to walk into a Bad Quarterback Fan Club meeting and throw around some platitudes like “lol guys did you see Tua last year?” We have standards around here. And instead of saying something ridiculous like “Justin Fields (not a starter) should be more like Brady (they could not be more stylistically different),” I picked a trio of pocket passers to evaluate with the Brady Scale. Hopefully, we will all learn something valuable from the 48-year-old. 

1. Tua Tagovailoa

Most “Tom Brady” Thing to Improve On: “Twitchability”

Tagovailoa and I have not had the greatest offseason together. We had a falling out in my winners and losers column and then didn’t exactly mend things in my power rankings a week later. But I’m turning over a new leaf; rather than infinitely question what the heck the Atlanta Falcons are thinking with employing Tua, I’m going to tell you why I’m so passionate about this from the perspective of Tom Brady’s “mobility,” better referred to as “twitchability.”

Brady was not a mobile quarterback, not when he entered the league and not when he left it. But he was successful as a pocket passer not simply because of laser beam accuracy and calm decision-making: he was shockingly mobile in the pocket. Look at this clip from the flag football game. He’s 48 years old.

Those hips don’t lie. When you’re an immobile pocket passer, micro-movements from your shoulders, hips or torso are often the difference between taking a drive-killing sack or having an extra two seconds to throw. Tagovailoa’s biggest weakness, by far, is how when he feels pressure, the play is over. He bails out to one side or the other, often tucking the ball and trying to reset his feet under heavy pressure. But he is not athletic enough to pull off that kind of magic act; neither was Brady most of the time. If Tagovailoa wants to remain a starter in this league, “twitchability” is the name of the game.

2. Shedeur Sanders

Most “Tom Brady” Thing to Improve On: Throw the Ball Quickly

In 2022, Tom Brady had the shortest time to throw among starters (and most backups), coming in at 72nd overall among all players to throw a pass in the NFL that year. He was taking 2.32 seconds to get the ball out. In 2025, Shedeur Sanders, albeit in a small sample, took 2.92 seconds. In the Time To Throw Community (TTTC), we call a 0.6-second difference “an eternity.” 

The number of things that can go wrong in an NFL backfield in 2.32 seconds is still fairly high; your left guard could get obliterated by a stunt and suddenly your running back can’t pick up two free blitzers. But the number of things that can go wrong in an NFL backfield in 2.92 seconds is unsustainably high. And that’s 2.92 seconds per dropback on average over the course of an entire game. Ipso facto, we’re cooked.

When I watched Sanders at Colorado, he clearly had tons of physical talent and serious poise. That allowed him to dominate his less-than-stellar college competition in his two years before going to the NFL. However, he also sometimes suffered from “see it, throw it” syndrome, which is a habit that most young quarterbacks need time to kick: they want to know a guy is open before they rifle it in. That worked in the Big 12, it does not work in the NFL. 

Sanders is a player I really enjoyed watching in college, and when he was locked in, he could definitely anticipate throws and get the ball out of his hands. But he hasn’t done that in the NFL yet, when the pass rush and defensive backs are another planet of scary. Channel Brady, and throw the ball quick. 

3. Geno Smith 

Most “Tom Brady” Thing to Improve On: Situational Sacks

Growing up a Patriots fan, the number of times I said, “just gotta’ take the sack there,” frankly, doesn’t make sense. You basically never want to take a sack in the NFL, but sometimes the protection breaks down to the point where you just have to. Brady was a fine purveyor of reducing the impact of sacks by always protecting the ball and not trying to be a hero. He was also incredible at throwing the ball away, throwing it at some guys feet, or just generally not turning pressures into sacks. He is among the least-sacked quarterbacks of all time, which is one of those qualifications to being an all-time great. 

Geno Smith was among the most sacked quarterbacks last year, getting sacked on a fairly ridiculous 10.56 percent of his dropbacks. His offensive line in Las Vegas was terrible, but the New York Jets do not have a better offensive line whatsoever; Smith is going to have to take fewer sacks if he is going to impact winning. 

Smith has always taken a lot of sacks, but his best season in 2023 is a notable exception. I’m not exactly breaking new ground here by saying that a quarterback who takes fewer sacks is going to be better, but … that’s kind of the long and short of it. To be elite, Smith will basically have to halve that sack rate to around 5 to 6 percent, his figure in 2023. Tom Brady’s late-career sack-avoidance is the blueprint: he was sacked on an astronomically low 2.9 percent of dropbacks in 2022. 

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