Immediately after the Ravens beat the Patriots in the AFC Championship Game, Baltimore safety Bernard Pollard said he thought New England quarterback Tom Brady tried to kick Ravens safety Ed Reed during a feet-first slide. With some time to look at the replays and think about it, Pollard pressed the case on Monday that the NFL should discipline Brady.
“When you slide . . . everything is on the ground. He knew what he was doing,” Pollard said on Monday. “It has to go both ways. Hopefully the NFL will do something about it.”
Realistically, there’s almost no chance that the NFL will do something about it. It’s impossible to know whether Brady was trying to kick Reed or whether his foot just came up awkwardly in his slide, and the NFL isn’t going to fine Brady for something that might have been an accident.
But Pollard will continue to press his case in part to point out a double standard: Quarterbacks get the benefit of the doubt on incidents like this. Defensive players do not.
