Sunday’s Super Bowl finished in controversial fashion when Eagles cornerback James Bradberry was called for holding when the game was tied at 35 with less than two minutes left. Bradberry appeared to tug on Chiefs receiver JuJu Smith-Schuster’s jersey early on in the play and the ball sailed over the wideout’s head on third-and-8.
The penalty negated the stop and led to an eventual game-winning field goal for Kansas City. The flag drew criticism because there didn’t appear to be that much contact on the play and fans didn’t like that such a small tug was called in the biggest moment of the season. As a fan, Tom Brady addressed the flag on his podcast.
“Well it’s always, I think, easier not to call it,” he said 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/DB 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 DB can do in order to make the play.
“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,” he continued. “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.”
After the game, Philadelphia players were quick to say that one call didn’t cost them the game, including coach Nick Sirianni. Bradberry also admitted he did hold Smith-Schuster.
“It was a hold, so they called it,” he said after the 38–35 loss.
