how is Darren Woodson not on this list? Dude was a stud, brilliant in coverage and run support.

Offensive holding is the worst.

It can be called on every snap…so the refs can use it to control the flow of a game. Sometimes they swallow their whistles.

Worst is when “Team A” is expected to win by a decent margin but it feels like the league wants a nail-biter. They’ll start calling holding on every big play Team A gets so that they stay in 3rd & long situations. Team B hangs in the game long enough to make it interesting. Refs will throw some random penalties at Team B later in the game to even up the flags.

Team B gets a bunch of ticky tack calls and thinks the league conspired against them late in the game. Team A feels like they got a bunch of momentum killing calls early…and would have blown out Team B otherwise.

The QBs today only know the current way of playing (since 2004)…so it’s like playing on “Hard” mode. Brady, Manning etc., played on “Ultra Hard” mode to start their careers. Rules changes made it feel like “normal” mode.

Defensive players in today’s game are better than when Manning/Brady played because they play effectively even WITH all the handcuffs on defenders. They never had the old rules so there was no adjustment. The rule changes were from 19 years ago. Most top shelf defenders were somewhere between Pee Wee and middle school football at that point. Some guys were too young even for Pee Wee 19 years ago. All they know is modern ball so this feels normal for them.

TL;DR - old QBs had an advantage with the rule switch 19 years ago but modern QBs don’t have the advantage since modern defensive players only know one way to play