Pretty easy to throw these takes on the NFL being soft after you are out of the NFL, huh Tom?
Brady may not be playing football anymore, but he’s still doing plenty of stuff that’s adjacent to the NFL, like his podcast Let’s Go that he does with Jim Gray and Larry Fitzgerald.
He’s also got a multi-million dollar broadcasting deal just kind of sitting there with Fox Sports, and who knows if he’ll ever actually climb into the broadcasting booth.
It seems like he’s doing just fine with his podcast, and has been giving out some pretty interesting takes on there as of late. Brady recently decided to comment on the state of the NFL, which was inspired by the ending of the Sunday Night Football game between the Buffalo Bills and the New York Giants.
If you happened to miss how it wrapped up, the Bills ended up winning after keeping the Giants from scoring a touchdown when they were on the one yard line (thanks to a previous penalty that was called on the Bills).
Take a look:
That play has actually been controversial, with many saying that Giants Tight End Darren Waller (the guy the ball was thrown to) was held on the play and it wasn’t called. Could it have been because the refs had just thrown a flag on the play before and wanted to “let them play?” I think so…
And someone that agreed with me was future Hall of Famer and 7-time Super Bowl winner Tom Brady. I guess that means both he and I really know a lot about football.
On the Let’s Go podcast, Brady spoke about the play that ended the game, saying:
“It’s definitely a penalty. There was obviously a holding, they just didn’t call it. Football is a physical sport, there’s a physical element to all of this.
You throw a 15-yard flag for something that, you know, 20 years ago maybe wouldn’t have had a flag. That affects the game in a big way.”
But Brady didn’t stop there. He decided to spin it into a hot take that the NFL is basically moving towards a watered down, flag football version of itself:
“There’s so many people that want it less and less physical, it’s more like flag football, which is going to be in the Olympics in 2028. Maybe football goes to flag football over a period of time.”
Pretty bold from someone who arguably made the NFL (or at least was the reason the league chose to) introduce an abundance of precautions to protect quarterbacks…
Of course it’s the same criticism that a lot of fans have: That the league is getting too soft and throwing too many flags for contact that’s just a part of the game. It’s just interesting to hear it come from somebody who was the recipient of a lot of those flags that fans complained about over the years…
Flag football in the 2028 Olympics though? There’s another sport that America should dominate in, as long as we get our NFL stars to play in it.
