Tom Brady on Monday weighed in on the controversial holding penalty in the closing minutes of Super Bowl LVII between the Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs.
Eagles cornerback James Bradberry was called for the penalty and it helped the Chiefs keep their drive alive and eventually kick the go-ahead field goal to solidify a 38-35 victory. Bradberry would admit later he did, in fact, hold JuJu Smith-Schuster on that play.
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Regardless, the ire was on the referees and even Brady agreed it was "easier not to call" the foul.
"Well it's always, I think, easier not to call it," he explained on the "Let’s Go!" podcast. "The hard one is when you do call it because there's a lot of scrutiny with that call. And I think the point is at least from a receiver/(defensive back) standpoint, if you're not gonna cover him, let's say, within the letter of the law and you're gonna tug at him, you can impede the receiver from where he wants to go and create an almost impossible throw-and-catch by the quarterback. And at the same time on the other side of the ball, if the receiver pushes off, there's really nothing the [defensive back] can do in order to make the play. So it's such a hard situation ‘cause you don't know how the game's being called all day long. …
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"So, you know, those plays come up all the time. In every part of the game they could be called. So the fact that it just comes down to that one moment, I'm sure there were lots of other holds that were let go. There was probably a few that they called and in the end you just have to, you know, the ref is trying to do the best that he could do. So I don't get caught up too much on one call. I think I've been in sports long enough where I realize there's a lot of things that impact the game and one referee’s call, yeah it's important but, you know, the referees are doing the best they could do and they're not robots either."
Head official Carl Cheffers was asked about the penalty after the game.
"It was a clear case of a jersey grab that caused restriction," he explained, via the pool report.
"There was no debate. Just making sure what he had, and once he told us what he had, we went about our business."
