NFL icon Tom Brady admits that the controversial penalty on the Philadelphia Eagles that paved the way for the Kansas City Chiefs' Super Bowl 57 win was a tricky call to make; however, he played down the talks that it was that one play that decided the match.
Speaking on his Let's Go! podcast, Brady gave his two cents on the matter and noted that it's “easier not to call it.” But at the end of the day, he knows where the referees are coming from and what prompted the call.
For insight on the Chiefs' Super Bowl 57 win over the Eagles, listen below:
“Well it's always, I think, easier not to call it,” Brady said, via FOX News. “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.”
For those who missed it, Eagles cornerback James Bradberry was issued a defensive holding penalty for grabbing the jersey of Chiefs wide receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster late in the fourth quarter of Super Bowl 57. Kansas City was at third down at the point, but they got a new set of downs with the call and it actually allowed them to run down the clock before Harrison Butker took the game-winning field goal with just a few seconds left.
It is certainly one of the biggest deciding factors in the game. For Tom Brady, however, the referees shouldn't be blamed or blasted for it. After all, there are several factors that affect the results. For one, the Eagles were up by 10 at halftime but ended up the ones trailing in the fourth before losing.
“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.,” Brady added. “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.”
Bradberry himself admitted that he indeed grabbed Smith-Schuster's jersey in the controversial play, and the officials said the same thing following the contest. The Eagles cornerback hoped the officials wouldn't call it considering how the game was going, but in the end, the referees did and there's nothing wrong with that.
Both the Eagles and Chiefs were certainly deserving to win. Unfortunately for Philadelphia, they just fell a little bit short in the end as Kansas City used their championship experience to edge them.
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