The Patriots had a comfortable lead in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s win over the Bengals, and a lot of fans in New England decided to leave the stadium early, beat traffic, and get home in time to catch some of the late-afternoon games on TV.
Patriots quarterback Tom Brady noticed, and he wasn’t happy about it.
The Boston Herald reports that Brady ripped into Patriots fans today, wondering aloud why they leave games early while fans of other teams don’t.
“The road environment is very different than our friendly home crowd, who when I looked up, half the stadium was gone when we were up 21 points early fourth quarter, which I wasn’t so happy about,” Brady said. “I don’t think the Jets fans leave early. They’re going to be loud the whole game. Communication is always an issue.”
If there’s any player beloved enough among his team’s fans that he can get away with that kind of criticism, it’s Brady. So there probably won’t be any type of fallout as far as the fans of New England are concerned, and if anything it might lead some of them to stick around a little longer.
But my own opinion is that the folks who spend a small fortune on tickets so that Brady can earn a large fortune in salary can decide for themselves when they want to leave the stadium.