Tom Brady Criticizes NFL Officiating: ‘It's More Like Flag Football’

The former quarterback said he usually believes that referees' calls "even themselves out over the period of the season"

In his first NFL season post-retirement, Tom Brady is learning what it's like to watch the NFL as a fan. As most football fans know, that includes taking issue with the officiating.

Brady, 46, shared his criticism of the NFL's referees during a discussion on this week's episode of his SiriusXM show, Let's Go! with Tom Brady, Larry Fitzgerald and Jim Gray, calling the professional football league "more like flag football" on Tuesday.

"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. "Maybe football goes to flag football over a period of time."

Specifically, Brady referenced Sunday's game between the New York Giants and Buffalo Bills, which resulted in a Giants loss after officials missed a flag that would have benefitted New York in the final moments of the game.

"It's definitely a penalty," Brady said of a play on Giants' Darren Waller. "There was obviously a holding, they just didn't call it."

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The former quarterback said he usually believes that referees' calls "even themselves out over the period of the season," but admitted that "it's also tough when you see a call like that...it's really unfair."

Brady continued, "I don't know why they call it sometimes when they don't. I always had a problem when they threw a flag and it didn't happen. Like, for example, they call a hold and there was no hold. I don't know how you can throw a flag on something that you didn't see. I always accepted the fact that if a ref, if there was a hold and they didn't call it, okay, I didn't see the call. So sometimes they let guys play.”

Of the Giants' loss to the Bills, Brady said the missed call on the Waller play was "so obvious," and he added, "because it's at the end of the game, you know, everyone wants it called, and you'd always love the refs to get it right."

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However, Brady said that's the nature of sports. "[The refs] don't always get it right. They mess up, too, just like we as players mess up. So I don't think you always blame the refs. I don't think you can always let the refs off," Brady said.

He added, "There's always probably a middle ground in all of it that you're hoping over the course of the season they balance themselves out and maybe you're on the positive end of one of those calls."

The former quarterback shared his take, insisting that the physicality of football comes with the sport's territory.

"Football is a physical sport; there's a physical element to all of this. 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," Brady explained.

The seven-time Super Bowl winner admitted he can "see why normal fans get pissed off" when watching football games that are decided by officiating calls. “Because there's so much more context when you're watching [and] you have this TV and they show every replay. On the field you don't see any of that."

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Brady is set to make his broadcasting debut on Fox Sports in 2024, and the retired athlete said he's already begun shifting his perspective to a broadcaster's when watching NFL games this season.

“I'm taking it all in," Brady said. "I'm trying to actually listen a little bit from a broadcaster standpoint and how they're calling the game, you know, paying attention more to, I'd say, the broadcasting element of it, the pageantry of it rather than, I would say, the nuances and the technicalities of the game.”

The former Bucs star previously announced his broadcasting plans in May 2022, sharing at the time that he was "excited" about the opportunity.

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