Tom Brady was just being honest.
The Super Bowl-winning quarterback for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers was interviewed for the team’s official website heading into the season, and he discussed some of the many changes he has seen in his two decades in the game, among other things.
In a candid moment, the seven-time Super Bowl champ talked about a very key responsibility that all quarterbacks have, and how he handled that responsibility throughout his career.
“A quarterback should only throw the ball to certain places because your receiver is in danger of getting hit,” Brady began. “For example, I used to play against Ray Lewis. I wouldn’t throw the ball to the middle of the field because he’d go after you, and he’d hit — we didn’t always have the biggest receivers — but he would hit ’em and knock them out of the game. And now, every hard hit is a penalty on the defense, so I feel like they penalize defensive players for offensive mistakes.”
Then, Brady listed a specific play from the Chicago Bears‘ quarterback and offensive line as an example of what not to do.
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Brady Uses Bears as Negative Example
Brady didn’t name names, but he discussed a recent example of what he perceived to be a defensive player getting penalized for an offensive player’s mistake: “So, like, if a quarterback — I was watching the Chicago Bear game. The quarterback messes up, doesn’t see the blitzer, or the line screws up — I don’t know what happened, the quarterback or the line on offense — the defensive player comes in and hits him hard, and they throw a flag on the defense.”
Brady then revealed an interesting tidbit about how he views the responsibilities of signal-callers in this league:
“If you’re a quarterback, you’ve gotta protect yourself and your players. It shouldn’t be the responsibility of your opponent to protect you. … It creates really bad habits for players, because you feel like: ‘I can basically do anything. I could run and not slide. I can throw my receiver into any coverage and not have any repercussion for it.'”
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Brady Was Likely Referring to a Rookie Mistake By Justin Fields
While Brady didn’t get into specifics about which Bears quarterback was hit by a defender who was subsequently penalized, it seems clear he was referring to the hit Buffalo Bills linebacker Andre Smith put on Bears rookie QB Justin Fields that occurred in the team’s second preseason game.
Fields missed a clear blitz indicator, and so did everyone on the Bears’ offensive line, which resulted in Fields getting nailed on the play. Smith was flagged for unnecessary roughness, and fortunately, Fields popped up and was fine.
Andre Smith just destroyed Justin Fields. Wow. (Fields got up after and is fine.)
Brady was absolutely correct in his assessment of what he saw during the Bears game — if this is the play he’s referring to, and it very likely is — but one thing he didn’t note was Smith’s hit was a helmet-to-helmet one, which is illegal. Smith was fined $5,806 for the hit on Fields after the game.
For his part, the Bears rookie signal-caller owned his error in failing to recognize the blitz, and has vowed to learn from it.
You can watch the entire clip of Brady using the Bears as a bad example below:
Tom Brady hits the bull’s eye yet again.
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