NFL Official Explains Why He Gave Tom Brady First Unsportsmanlike Conduct Penalty of Career

By Brian Jones

Tom Brady did not have a good weekend. On Sunday, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback and his teammates came up short against the Los Angeles Rams in the divisional round of the playoffs and won't defend their Super Bowl title. In the early stages of the game, Brady was hit with an unsportsmanlike conduct penalty, which is the first of his career. Once the game was over, the pool report was released and referee Shawn Hochuli explained why he penalized Brady. 

"He got in my face in an aggressive manner and used abusive language," Hochuli said, per NFL.com. "As for the hit, we did not think that it rose to the level of roughing the passer." Brady lashed out at Hochuli after being hit by Rams defender Von Miller. He was hit in the upper chest area which led to his lip bleeding and getting angry at the referee. 

It was one of the many hits Brady took in the game, which is one of the reasons why the Bucs fell to the Rams. "I think there's a lot of really tough, hard-nosed guys [on the roster] that believe in each other and we all believe we've got to make just one play to get ourselves in the end zone," Brady said after the game, per the team's official website. 

"We just overcame a lot of mistakes. At the end, there were just way too many mistakes. You've got to play clean games if you want to give yourselves the best chance to win. If it's less than that, you're not going to have a great chance to win. You may have a chance to win but not a chance to win that we needed. They made plenty of mistakes too and it wasn't, I would say, a perfect game by them either, but in the end they just made one more play than us."

Before the game, ESPN reported that Brady has not made a decision on playing next season and will take a month or longer to see if he wants to play in 2022 or retire. He told reporters, "I haven't put a lot of thought into it, so you know, we will just take it day by day and kind of see where we are at."

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