While discussing his distaste for “man-made lawyer” rules in the NFL this week, former Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis made a provocative statement about Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.
Lewis said that “the only reason” we know Brady is because of the tuck rule, which overturned a fumble in a snowy 2002 playoff game between the Patriots and Raiders. The Patriots went on to win that game and won the first of their three Super Bowls with Brady at the helm.
The fact that they won two more Super Bowls after that season would seem to damage Lewis’s assertion about Brady’s legacy, which may be why Brady avoided a war of words with Lewis when he was asked about the comments on Thursday.
“Everyone has an opinion,” Brady said, via WEEI.com. “I think Ray is a great player. He’s a first-ballot Hall of Famer. I was fortunate enough to play against him.”
Lewis’s larger point about convoluted NFL rules such as the now-abolished tuck rule and the “process” of making a catch has a great deal of validity. Stretching it to suggest Brady’s status in the NFL is solely because of one ruling on one play in a long, successful career is a lot harder to get behind.
