Before the Cincinnati Bengals and Tampa Bay Buccaneers got together in Week 15, Tom Brady had a quote about the opponent’s defense go viral.
Buy Bengals TicketsBrady then proceeded to turn the ball over four times as the Bengals scored 34 unanswered points to pull off the 34-23 win.
After the game, video chronicling Cincinnati players going back to the locker room caught cornerback Eli Apple saying “the future is now old man” and defensive tackle B.J. Hill saying “we’re fairly tough on defense, remember that.”
As we wrote at the time about Brady giving the Bengals bulletin board material, what the Bucs quarterback said wasn’t really all that bad and was somewhat cherry-picked out of a bigger quote. He was assuredly wrong, but didn’t mean much by it — trash talk it was not.
But like we said, players and underdog-minded teams find any and all little thing to get motivated about. Brady’s quote was one of them and it was surely said a few times in the Cincinnati locker room while the Bengals were down 17-3.
The post-game message, as captured by Paul Dehner Jr. of the Cincinnati Enquirer:
Eli Apple and BJ Hill with a couple messages for Tom Brady. Hill obviously heard the “fairly tough” comment this week. pic.twitter.com/6CGe9FbZ6L
— Paul Dehner Jr. (@pauldehnerjr) December 19, 2022
