You do not want to make Tom Brady angry. You will not like him when he’s angry. Yesterday the Golden Boy laid into the NFL-N for comments that Sterling Sharpe made about backup Pats QB, Matt Cassel. Sharpe and Marshall Faulk were pretty critical of Cassel in his last game against the Bucs, but neither said anything that out of line. The most I can gather is that Sharpe said that the Patriots shouldn’t be “too comfortable” with their backup QB.
Well that angered Brady and he had this to say on WEEI yesterday. Via The Boston Herald….
“Watching Matt (Sunday) night, hearing all the criticism, I don’t even know where that was coming from,” he said. “That was so far from what I was watching. The quarterback has a lot of responsibility out there. I thought Matt was making good decisions. He was really decisive with his throws. Was every throw perfect? No. But that doesn’t happen so often anyway.
“I see Matt every day in practice and the improvement he makes. I love what I see in Matt. I have a lot of confidence in Matt . . . for the three guys sitting in the booth, I thought it was unfair to criticize the way they were criticizing, because I don’t think they really knew what was happening.”
Now I know that Brady has to stick up for his friend and teammate, but let’s be honest here….Faulk will be a HOFer and Sharpe would have been if not for injuries. I think they’re pretty qualified to say if a QB is having a bad day. With Brady himself being injured, it’s also a pretty good point to raise in a preseason game.
Cassel himself responded himself after the “criticism” and had this to say: “It’s interesting to me because those guys were in the same shoes at one point in their career, and they should understand how hard it is to go out there and perform each and every week.”
Now I didn’t hear the conversation firsthand, but if you’re seriously that defensive about a random announcer’s comments in the freaking preseason, maybe the NFL isn’t the place for you. This whole “The World is against us” routine the Patriots try to pull off every single week is getting old. And good for Sterling, he’s standing by his assessment….
“It looked as though the passing offense made a change, as a confidence-building thing with some of the throws for Matt,” Sharpe said. “I could be way off on that. Maybe I missed the boat, and if so, I apologize. But from a player’s perspective, I’m looking at it like, he’s already been in the situation for three years now and he’s in a quarterback battle with a rookie and a guy without much experience? If he’s in a battle, you’d expect him to win it. . . . This was his opportunity to separate himself from the other guys. He has to show why he is the No. 2 guy in New England. So I put more pressure on Matt to perform than I did (Kevin) O’Connell. You bet I did.”
Honesty is the best policy when it comes to announcing, and if a player stinks, I don’t want an announcer holding anything back. With ESPN and CBS kissing the Pats collective ass whenever they can, it’s great to hear someone take a stand. Bravo Sterling.
Sterling Sharpe’s words for Matt Cassel defended (Boston Herald)
