The NFL announced on Tuesday that it is reviewing the play from the AFC Championship Game where Tom Brady slid toward Ed Reed with his cleats in the air. When watching the play, which you can see here, it certainly looked like Brady intended to kick Reed. Whether the NFL will actually discipline the Golden Boy or not remains to be seen, but the Patriots quarterback has since apologized to Reed.
“I told him — you know, we talked,” Reed told WJZ-FM in Baltimore, via ESPNBoston.com. “We talked actually not too long ago, we talked on the phone. He actually reached out to me, texted me. I tried to text him back, but the message exploded after 12 seconds, so I had to call him … and he’s just apologized and what not. But I told him, ‘You know, it’s good, man.’
“I know he’s a great player. I respect Brady and his game for all it stands for, and I know he’s not a dirty player. And emotions get going in the game.”
No two people in football respect Ed Reed more than Brady and Bill Belichick. They’re always gushing about him and talking about what an unbelievable defender he is, as evidenced by the way they were talking about him in the Belichick documentary “A Football Life.”
While people like Bernard Pollard want to see the league make an example of Brady and prove that quarterbacks don’t receive preferential treatment, it’s not like Brady intended to seriously injure Reed. He got caught up in the heat of the moment, which happens to almost every player at some point. The reason it’s such a big deal is that Brady has never done anything like that before. That’s precisely why the league is unlikely to fine him.
