Tom Brady: I fully support Peyton Manning

Tom Brady knows plenty about being accused of breaking rules, and it is not a surprise that he supports Peyton Manning given all that has transpired over the past year.

During his weekly appearance on WEEI in Boston, Brady was asked about the report over the weekend that linked Manning to performance-enhancing drug use.

“Peyton, I would consider him a good friend. You hate to see your good friends go through anything like that,” Brady said. “He’s been a great player for this league, for his teams, for his organizations. He’s been one of the best players to ever play the game. Nobody has more respect for Peyton than I do, and everything that he’s accomplished. There’s always challenging times, but he’s a tough guy. I know that. He’s a very mentally and physically tough guy. … He’s a big boy. He knows how to handle these things.

“I fully support Peyton. My friendship with him over the years, he’s a guy that I can always count on, and has been someone that’s always been so supportive of me. We’ll have lifelong friendships. Truthfully I don’t put much into anything.”

If you crawled under a rock over the weekend or were traveling to a remote location for the holidays, you may have missed that Manning was accused of having HGH mailed to his house in his wife’s name. Manning angrily denied the allegations in an interview with ESPN, which you can see here.

Despite that awkward email exchange that went viral last year, there are no hard feelings between Brady and Manning. The last thing Brady would do is question another future Hall of Famer’s integrity after all that happened (and is still happening) with Deflategate.