Idioms

Monday-morning quarterback

Monday morning quarterback

A person who acts like they have all the answers to a problem, especially in hindsight, usually without having any experience in that area. Likened to fans and commentators who criticize a football team after a Sunday game. Primarily heard in US. Social media seems to have turned everyone into a Monday morning quarterback whenever political issues are discussed.
See also: Monday, morning, quarterback
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms. © 2024 Farlex, Inc, all rights reserved.

Monday-morning quarterback

A person who criticizes or passes judgment from a position of hindsight, as in Ethel was a Monday-morning quarterback about all the personnel changes in her department-she always claimed to have known what was going to happen . This expression, first recorded in 1932, alludes to fans who verbally "replay" Sunday's football game the next day, the quarterback being the team member who calls the plays.
See also: quarterback
The American Heritage® Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer. Copyright © 2003, 1997 by The Christine Ammer 1992 Trust. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

Monday-morning quarterback

A person who criticizes decisions or actions after the fact, with twenty-twenty hindsight. The term originated in the 1930s when football as a spectator sport was seen mostly on weekends, and office discussions of the previous weekend’s game would often be dominated by one or more “experts” who “revised” the quarterback’s instructions to the team so as to achieve superior results. In print the term appeared in Barry Wood’s What Price Football (1932), in which he applied it to sportswriters who were not content with reporting the game but felt they had to analyze it. In succeeding decades it was transferred to anyone second-guessing any past decision.
See also: quarterback
The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer Copyright © 2013 by Christine Ammer
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References in periodicals archive
Parents will Monday-morning quarterback their own parenting, while children rarely dwell on how their words and behaviors might have injured their parents.
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Of course, it's easy to play Monday-morning quarterback. Coincident with the Broncos' Invesco slide has been the retirement (at least from the field) of the greatest player the team ever had.
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"We are going to Monday-morning quarterback this," Clements said.
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As a dramaturg, I am compelled to play Monday-morning quarterback (is there such a thing as a Monday-morning dramaturg?).
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Be a good leader and a positive, enthusiastic thinker--not a Monday-morning quarterback.
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Now, any good Monday-morning quarterback would ask, "So, you were blue water, right?" Well, no, we weren't.
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To throw a knockout punch - and end someone's week?" (173), Monday-morning quarterback: "A second-guesser.
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They captured not only turmoil and toil, but character Typical was the one about his uncle's Soho barber, a man who, playing Monday-morning quarterback, recounted how he would have guided Napoleon's troops at Waterloo.
Why we need a new Dickens; everyone cares about Oliver Twist. Now we need to help the Artful Dodgers
Beebe put on his pads and helmet, ran onto the field and has taken his share of hits while we've been hanging out with our friends in the stands playing Monday-morning quarterback. I'm ready to get in the game and I'm ready for a win-win.
A win-win in Medicaid
Saying he doesn't want to be a Monday-morning quarterback, Ramos hopes that the public will cooperate with the government for the successful hosting of the Apec Summit.
Apec should not inconvenience Filipinos-Fidel Ramos
Besides the people who actually have to plow and remove this, do any of these "Monday-morning quarterbacks'' know what a Herculean task this has been to keep the streets in Worcester open?
DPW hard at work, deserves credit
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