Tom Brady wasn’t holding back when he slammed NFL refs for making bad or weak calls, suggesting that the NFL is starting to look more like “flag football” than real football. Brady knows a thing or two, he’s won seven Super Bowls and was smashed quite a few times whenever a defense could get to him.<\/p>\n
Brady was talking on a podcast when he made these comments and Bleacher Report wrote about how Brady was reviewing a play that involved a holding penalty. The podcast is called “Lets Go!” and Brady hosts it with Jim Gray and Larry Fitzgerald.\u00a0 The play they’re talking about comes from the Bills game when they barely beat the NY Giants 14-9. The report said<\/a>:<\/p>\n “It’s definitely a penalty,” he said (starts at 5:43). “There was obviously a holding, they just didn’t call it.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n However, Brady was less excited about the abundance of flags thrown in games throughout the 2023 season.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n “Football is a physical sport, there’s a physical element to all of this,” he said (4:35). “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.”<\/p>\n The 15-time Pro Bowler likened today’s NFL landscape to the sport of flag football, where collisions between players are discouraged and thus much more infrequent.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n “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 (8:30). “Maybe football goes to flag football over a period of time.”<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n So what’s the deal with NFL referees? Are they calling football plays too close, too lose, just right, or there’s just some bad refs out there? Is there protocol in place to call plays a certain way to increase player safety? Or is this just how refs have been for a while and they need a quick reminder of how and when to call plays appropriately.<\/p>\n NFL referees are constantly on display and always criticized, especially the times where they’ve made really bad calls. Refs were so bad this week that Sports Illustrated did an entire story on blown calls in the NFL<\/a> – and there was a lot!<\/p>\n How are the NFL referees for your team?<\/p>\n Personal foul called here and it gives the Browns a 1st down. #SFvsCLE<\/a> pic.twitter.com\/WHCJIne6ew<\/a><\/p>\n — Rate the Refs (@Rate_the_Refs) October 15, 2023<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n
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