New England Patriots Legend Tom Brady Criticizes NFL 'Flag Football'
Reduced to an NFL spectator for the first time since 1999, Tom Brady has enjoyed the NFL fan experience ... with one yellow exception.
Free from potential fines normally assessed to such complainers, the former New England Patriots became the newest critic of the league's officiating during the latest edition of "Let's Go! with Tom Brady, Larry Fitzgerald, and Jim Gray." Penalty flags are more common than ever in the modern NFL, as a whopping 1,402 have been thrown through the first six full weeks of the 2023 season (including declined and offsetting charges).
Having moved from the huddle to the couch, Brady has been displeased with the excess laundry.
“Football is a physical sport, there’s a physical element to all of this,” Brady 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 (R) ranted against refs in the latest edition of his SiriusXM show
Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports
To Brady's point, several prime time games have been at least drastically altered by questionable calls. Last February's Super Bowl, for example, saw the Philadelphia Eagles charged with a critical defensive holding call that set the Kansas City Chiefs in a position to not only run the clock out but kick the game-winning field goal as well.
Brady feels like things could get to a point where the NFL opts for a different kind of flag, even before it makes its debut at the 2028 Olympics.
"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," he declared. "Maybe football goes to flag football over a period of time."
Ironically enough, Brady was particularly peeved about a lack of a penalty call, one that benefitted one of his former division rivals on Sunday night.
In the most weekend capper, the Buffalo Bills staved off an upset bid from the New York Giants by a 14-9 final. The win was far from easy, as it came down to a final drive at the cusp of the Bills' goal line. On the final play, Tyrod Taylor's would-be touchdown pass to Darren Waller fell incomplete but many felt that Buffalo defender Taron Johnson should've been flagged for holding or defensive pass interference, which would've given the Giants one final, untimed down to win the game.
Brady said that Waller was "obviously" held and hindered from grabbing the would-be winner. Such calls, he claims, make it easy to "see why normal fans get (ticked) off," even if he says that referee decisions have a way of "even(ing) themselves out" over the course of a season.
"I don't know why they call it sometimes when they don't," Brady said. "I always had a problem when they threw a flag and it didn't happen. Like, for example, they call a hold and there was no hold.
"I don't know how you can throw a flag on something that you didn't see. I always accepted the fact that if a ref, if there was a hold and they didn't call it, okay, I didn't see the call. So sometimes they let guys play.”
