Former New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady knows how important good offensive line play is.
Brady, who was obviously a part of some of the best groups we’ve seen during his nearly 20-years in New England, spoke about that recently during an appearance on with Colin Cowherd on the most recent The Herd with Colin Cowherd podcast.
During the interview, Brady said he believes that despite how good a quarterback might be, it’s impossible to completely cover up bad offensive line play. He also added that there’s so many nuances when it comes to that group, and he believes that having a good offensive line coach is definitely an underrated aspect of the game.
“There’s so many nuances to the success of an offense. I don’t think you can ever make a bad O-line good,” said Brady. “And over the course of my career, I always, I believe I played with the best offensive line coach in the history of the NFL, Dante Scarneccia. Regardless of who we drafted, free agents, we got free agents in the draft, free agents in NFL, free agency, veteran free agency. We always pieced together a unit that played really well together. All of them may not have been Pro bowlers, but as a unit, they played as well as any team in the league.”
“That was a tough challenge for every D-line you would play. You’d go, Okay, I know they’re going to block us well. I know the ball is going to come out quick. I know they’re going to have good plans when we play They’re going to have man coverage. They’re going to have man-beaters. I know when we get in the red area, they’re going to challenge us. They’re going to have some different schemes in there in the run game that we’re going to prepare for.”
Having played during an era where they had one of the best to ever do it coaching the offensive line, that remains an area Brady believes is lacking league-wide and what Scarnecchia was able to do is something he continues to be impressed by.
“We put a lot of pressure on the defense all the time to do things the right way, as opposed to the five the offensive lineman, having a draft, first-round pick, first-round pick, first-round pick to put together a great O-line. So much of great O-line play is a great O-line coach. I think we could talk about there’s not a lot of great O-line coaches anymore in the NFL.”
(Editor’s Note: Portions of the above appeared in this morning’s Patriots news and notes column.)
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Dante Scarnecchia
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