As someone who watched NFL games as a professional observer … well, I pretty much took a generation off.

The Rams and Raiders left Los Angeles after the 1994 season, and the 18 years I worked in the same media market as at least one NFL team has since been nearly equaled by the 17 seasons I have not.

Strangely, I may have watched more NFL football in the past four months, here in Abu Dhabi, than I have for years. (New satellite package!) Even more than when I was covering Super Bowls from 1995 till 2006 or so. I also have watched this extra NFL on television, which is quite different than seeing it live, in the sense of the zillion replays and slo-mo camera work.

And I have noticed one major change in the game:

The passing accuracy of quarterbacks. It’s now off the charts — or the QB is a bum.

Tim Tebow was the catalyst for this realization. He can’t always put a football on a guy’s numbers from 25 yards away. The assumption now being “Anyone can do that.”

When I checked out of the NFL as a professional analyst on a weekly basis, in 1994, the kind of precision passing now accepted as “normal” most certainly was not.

Seventeen seasons later, quarterbacks are expected to throw a ball into a crack of space 40 yards downfield. They must also complete at least 60 percent of their passes, even under these new, tighter working conditions, and they must have a touchdown to interception rate of at least 2-to-1 — and preferably much higher.

When did this all happen? During the last generation, apparently.

I have an advantage in that I usually joined the NFL season deep in progress, from 1995 forward. That is, I wasn’t really paying much attention to the NFL before the playoffs. And prior to 1995, I can assure you, QBs were not expected to make the throws they are expected to make now.

The whole definition of an open receiver has changed. Just a couple of decades ago, a receiver was open only when he had at least a step (if not a yard or, better, two) on a defender.

Now, quarterbacks will laser-guide the football into a six-inch space, expecting the receiver to deal with the small matter of catching it while being assaulted/blanketed by a defensive back. The calculus has changed; “he’s got a six-inch advantage, and if the throw is right, the responsibility now is on the receiver to pull it in.”

And two decades ago (certainly three), those receivers would not even have been considered “open” by the quarterback — or any other sensible observer.

When did quarterbacks become this accurate? How?

I saw plenty of pretty good quarterbacks (at the time) play — Pat Haden, Jeff Hostetler, Jim Everett — and they tended to be leaders, game-managers and decent passers. Well, at the time, we thought they were good passers — but not like the Rodgers, Brees, Brady, Manning, Manning, et al, are now.

Not like that.

Anyway, I am still getting used to this new reality. I remember a quarterback from the 1960s and 1970s, Bobby Douglass, and he made Tebow look like Tom Brady. But the Bears worked with Douglass, for years, thinking they could still make something of a guy who eventually had 36 TD passes against 64 interceptions.

Douglass, today, would have been a tight end from the age of 16.

So, if you are watching the conference championships on Sunday … perhaps take a moment to note how even lesser quarterbacks like Joe Flacco and Alex Smith are so accurate, usually.

These guys would have been considered gifted, in 1990.

Brady and Eli Manning? They would have been considered gods.