Ooh, shiny new bulletin board material already? Leading up to Sunday’s AFC Championship Game featuring the New England Patriots and Denver Broncos, Antonio Smith let it be known he agrees with the notion that Tom Brady is a crybaby.
“That would be an accurate statement. I’ve never seen any quarterback look to the referee right after he gets sacked more than Brady,” Smith said, via the Colorado Springs Gazette. “Every time he gets sacked he looks at the ref like, ‘You see him sack me? Was that supposed to happen? He did it a little hard. Please throw a 15-yard penalty on him. Get him fined.’”
In all honesty, Smith really does have a point.
Brady routinely expects to get all the calls. Because of his blown-out knee in 2008, the league actually implemented new rules to protect quarterbacks’ knees. Because he’s one of the league’s superstars, he has grown accustomed to getting those, calls, too, and when that doesn’t happen he does kind of flip his lid.
But as Smith conveyed, it never seems to affect the way he plays, at least not negatively.
“He’s not going to rattle just because you hit him hard. I’ve tried over the years,” Smith said. “That’s what D-linemen think: ‘The harder you hit the quarterback, the better it will make it on the secondary.’ With Brady, he’s a great competitor. You know it’s coming. He’s going to cry about getting hit, but he’s going to take the hit and keep going.”
The Broncos sure hope Brady does plenty of crying Sunday in Denver. Hits on the quarterback represent the team’s best chance to reach Super Bowl 50. As the Kansas City Chiefs found out last weekend, though, those can be awfully hard to come by.
Also, haven’t players learned not to piss off Brady by now?