It’s not exactly a secret that Tom Brady benefitted from NFL officiating during his Hall of Fame career. The New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback was on the right end of the “tuck rule” call and several others. The way the quarterback position is protected today is largely due to Brady’s influence on the game, but that doesn’t mean the 46-year-old is a fan of how games are officiated.
Now merely a spectator, Brady isn’t going to be fined for when he criticizes officials. And boy, did he take aim at the league’s officiating during his most recent Let’s Go podcast.
One of the plays from the weekend that Brady wasn’t particularly a fan of was the final play of the Buffalo Bills-New York Giants game on Sunday night.
THE BILLS WIN #NYGvsBUF pic.twitter.com/uLwamFkT4N
— NFL (@NFL) October 16, 2023
“It’s definitely a penalty,” Brady said, via CBS Sports. “There was obviously a holding, they just didn’t call it.”
While Brady wishes there was some laundry thrown on the field in that instance, he thinks in general the officials are throwing too many flags.
“Football is a physical sport, there’s a physical element to all of this,” the future Hall of Famer said. “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.”
Brady bemoaned about the state of the league, as the seven-time Super Bowl champion stated that the NFL is becoming more like flag football and that this may be the future of the game.
“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,” Brady said. “Maybe football goes to flag football over a period of time.
It doesn’t sound like Brady’s a huge fan of the direction the sport’s headed in.
