Terry Bradshaw Hates What The NFL Has Become In 2026

Fox NFL analyst Terry Bradshaw has been involved in the NFL for the entirety of his adult life and has seen seismic changes to how the game has been played since he started playing over 55 years ago. But he has some problems with the game of today.

Appearing on Real Time with Bill Maher, Bradshaw spoke about how some of the greatest plays of his NFL career might have been called back under the NFL’s new rules, instant replays and slowdowns. He then declared that the NFL’s pursuit of “a perfect game” have taken much of the fun out of it, like “collisions,” “pass interference” and “bad calls.”

“Now we have high-def, we have 20 tape machines, 30 cameras, we’ll slow it down. We’re even under the ball where they fall down, and we got it in sloooow motion, ‘Oh my God, that looks like his jersey moved!’ And they go, ‘FLAG!’ What made the game great?” Bradshaw asked. “It wasn’t the fact that we have a perfect game, which is what they’re trying to get. What made it great was collisions and pass interference and bad calls and the fans being mad!”

For many NFL fans, that comment felt a lot like a “old man yelling at clouds” moment and they said as much on X after seeing Bradshaw say that:

“Yeah at them clouds boiiii,” one user on X mocked.

“Love how the header image makes Terry look about as ‘old man yells at cloud’ as it could,” wrote another.

“Terry doesn’t even know where he is 90% of the time anymore,” a third said dismissively.

Does he have a point?

In some regards though, Bradshaw isn’t entirely wrong. There’s no shortage of times throughout the NFL season where we find ourselves arguing over instant replay ruining the momentum of games and turning huge crowd moments into disappointment.

One thing instant replay and over-corrective calls is ruin the flow of a game, often preventing fans from really getting into it since every big play feels like it’ll be followed by a flag that brings the play back.

But at the end of the day, fans still love the NFL as much or more than they did when Bradshaw was a player.