Dallas Cowboys legend Emmitt Smith played in the NFL when the game was rough and physical.

The NFL’s all-time leading rusher played between 1990 and 2004 and crossed paths with some of the best defenses of all time. He matched up against the stacked early 90’s “Gang Green” Philadelphia Eagles defensive units and the stifling early 2000’s Baltimore Ravens and Tampa Bay Buccaneers defenses.

When Smith played, defensive players were allowed to hit, they were able to defend receivers without ticky-tack pass interference penalties called and perhaps most importantly, they didn’t have to worry about hitting a player too hard rather than simply making a play.

Tom Brady — who recently retired after the 2022 season, but entered the NFL in 2000 — made headlines recently when he remarked that there’s a lot of “mediocrity” in today’s game, during a recent interview on “The Stephen A. Smith Show.”

While speaking about his new Bud Light commercial, Smith commented on Brady’s take regarding the current play in the NFL, agreeing with the seven-time Super Bowl champion’s stance. Smith cited bad penalty calls, guys playing like “robots” and players no longer relying on their instincts as reasons why the game has regressed.

“Totally with him,” Smith said regarding Brady’s comments. “Some of the things that you see is starting with the pass interference stuff against the DB’s and now it has tripled it’s way on over to the roughing the passer. And now it’s gone over even to hitting players and so forth, when and how you hit players. The game itself has changed.”

Games on a weekly basis are dictated by a referee’s whistle on a perceived late hit or borderline contact by a defensive back on a wide receiver. These calls are often made late in games, with outcomes heavily influenced by penalties, rather than the play on the field itself.

Despite rules becoming stricter to protect player safety — such as roughing the passer and unnecessary roughness — players are arguably getting injured more than ever before.

Four of the top seven AFC teams currently have injured starting quarterbacks — Anthony Richardson, Kenny Pickett, Deshaun Watson and Trevor Lawrence — while other notable starters such as Aaron Rodgers, Kirk Cousins and Joe Burrow are out with season-ending injuries.

Those number of key injuries back up Brady’s point that players don’t know how to protect themselves anymore. That lack of instinct is not only likely leading to more injuries, it’s leading to “amateur football,” as Smith describes it.

“Everybody has been told what to do and you can’t trust your instincts,” said Smith. “The players out there that are developing those instincts and developing themselves into great quarterbacks, being able to read coverages on their own and not having a coach dictate what they do with the football, those are the quality players that you’re looking for. That’s professional football. Everything else I just described is amateur football.”

That lack of instinct in today’s game is leading to guys playing like “robots,” according to the four-time rushing champion.

“Everybody’s trying to run the spread Wildcat offense and it’s eliminating the ability of a guy that may have the ability to see the field completely with peripheral vision and ability to make cuts and do things when he’s been told to just to run in one direction,” said Smith. “The game has evolved into just guys that are robots now, not thinking for themselves. Not really growing as individuals, not learning completely what the offense is all about, and not understanding combo packages and things of that nature.”

There’s little doubt the game has changed tremendously over the 20 years. Starting with the rule change of illegal contact in 2004 — penalty for bumping a receiver more than five yards from the line of scrimmage — the NFL has become a more offensive-driven league than ever before. The infamous lawsuit against the NFL regarding past players’ concussion issues undoubtedly played a major role in today’s game limiting head shots and hard hits on offensive players.

When factoring in the proliferation in popularity of fantasy sports and the U.S. Supreme Court striking down a federal ban on state authorization of sports betting back in 2018, there’s little reason for the NFL to limit rules and penalties that are heavily in favor of offenses.

While Smith and Brady are certainly not alone in their opinion that the on-field product has changed for the worse, it comes at a time when the NFL is raking in more viewers than ever before. Despite television ratings declining across the board in an age where consumers are cord-cutting, the NFL has been the lone product that is foolproof, recently drawing record TV ratings for its Thanksgiving Day games.

That’s not even mentioning how the NFL had 82 of the top 100 highest-rated broadcasts in 2022.

It also comes at a time when the NFL is due to make $125.5 billion due to their television rights deals over the next decade.

The product on the field is certainly declining, but the amount of money that is being brought in is higher than ever before.

Because of that, it’s hard to envision the NFL cracking down and taking a major initiative to clean up the calls and play on the field — no matter how mediocre it’s become.