Tom Brady took a big shot at Bengals QB Joe Burrow, and he totally missed the mark

Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow has been in the headlines a lot lately through no real fault of his own, except that he's really, really, really, ridiculously good at football. A celebrated annual survey and an on-the-record testimony by Dan Orlovsky this week praised Joe Brrr for his greatness in myriad ways.

As the 2025 NFL season quickly approaches, the time for exhibition stage chatter will mercifully end, and the players can provide clearer answers to whatever cheap debates people engage in before the real games start. Burrow is determined to lead the Bengals back to the playoffs after a two-year hiatus.

However outsiders want to assign the blame for Cincinnati's recent regression, Burrow should be at the bottom of the list for who to scrutinize. That didn't stop the GOAT himself from laying into the elite QBs not named Patrick Mahomes — and that includes the Bengals' face of the franchise.

Tom Brady suggests Joe Burrow doesn't do enough to lift the Bengals to Super Bowl glory

If anyone knows what it takes to lift the Lombardi Trophy, it's seven-time Super Bowl champion Tom Brady. In a podcast with Joel Klatt, TB12 spoke highly of Patrick Mahomes, who's led the Kansas City Chiefs to three Super Bowl victories already.

What's most notable here is how critical Brady was of the other top-tier QBs. Brady did state that he can only tell so much from afar, but nevertheless intimated that Mahomes is head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to him adhering to daily, actionable habits, and the willingness to do whatever it takes to win.

Although Brady didn't call out Burrow, Josh Allen, or Lamar Jackson by name, it's easy to read between the lines of what Brady said. Once he started calling out stats that only Burrow achieved in 2024, it was pretty obvious that Brady took a direct shot at him. I've included the full clip below, lest there be allegations of *taking things out of context* or whatever.

"At some point, they need to take the next step, and take, in my mind, more ownership of what they're doing in terms of the organizational level to do more things to empower more people to get more people on that train or that bus with you to head in the direction you want to go. So I just don't think, as a quarterback, you go and you punch the clock, I did my job. You know, I threw 40 touchdowns, why are we not winning? Like what are you doing in the offseason to help your defense? What are you doing to push the personnel department to get people doing the right thing? Are you involved in game-planning? I used to do game plans. I used to walk in there and say, ‘These are the things we're doing.’ OK? I used to do my own walkthroughs. I used to go, ‘Alright guys, I don't give a f*** if the coaches want to come. We’re doing our walkthrough. We're going to come up with our own signals. Because this is what I need to do on the field to be successful."

You could really take your pick on where to commence breaking down this Kurt Benkert-esque take, but we gotta start somewhere. Seriously, it's overwhelming how misguided and inaccurate Brady's opinion is here.

Brady is the GOAT on the field, but eh, maybe he could use a little fine-tuning in the media analysis portion of football. Bit of a cheap shot at his rookie campaign in the booth. Sorry, Tom.

OK anyway. While Allen didn't throw 40+ touchdowns this past year, Jackson and Burrow did. The difference is, the Ravens did win the AFC North with a 12-5 record, as Cincinnati settled for a 9-8 mark. So it's clear who Brady is talking about.

It's funny that Tom implicitly inquires about how much Joe is helping the dreadful Bengals defense. Burrow has been sitting with Cincinnati defenders in offseason film sessions to do exactly that.

As if forcing the defense to up their standard in practice wasn't enough. Or, you know, scoring 72 points against the Ravens in two meetings last season wasn't enough. I mean, it wasn't, Baltimore prevailed in both those matchups. When did Tom Brady ever have to deal with that during his New England Patriots tenure in the abysmal AFC East division?

Tom Brady was carried by his coach, defense, and o-line early on

During the seasons in which Brady won his first three Super Bowl wins, New England's defense ranked sixth, first, and second in scoring defense in those respective years. Lord have mercy if you gave Joe Burrow that type of support on the other side of the ball.

Brady can say he was going into defensive meetings and helping those far more experienced vets improve, but I wouldn't believe him. What could he possibly say as a young player that his literal GOAT head coach/all-time legendary defensive tactician Bill Belichick wouldn't already know?

Second big point: Are we really going to pretend that Brady wasn't drafted into one of the best situations in NFL history? To be clear, Belichick had four years as a head coach in Cleveland under his belt, and Brady joined the New England Patriots in 2000, where he didn't play for a 5-11 team.

The next season, Brady took the reins from an injured Drew Bledsoe and the rest is history. Belichick and Brady are intertwined in their successes and failures. Still, while I don't want to write off Bengals head coach Zac Taylor — who you can argue is off to a better start through six seasons than Belichick was as a head coach — the odds are pretty slim that he'll rival Belichick as one of the best to ever do it.

You also can't overlook the presence of offensive line coach Dante Scarnecchia. He was with the Pats from 1991 through 2019. The pass protection was exceptional for most of Brady's NFL life.

That Super Bowl Brady lost to the Giants? To blow a historic undefeated season? Where he trolled them for Plaxico Burress' prediction that the Pats would only score 17 points before the game? Only to get pummeled into submission by Michael Strahan and Co by a score of 17-14?

Yeah, Tom. That level of pressure you faced in that game is the degree of difficulty Joe Burrow deals with on a weekly basis.

Never mind the poor reputation the Bengals had before Burrow's arrival. Unlike Brady, he was thrown to the wolves as a rookie on a dreadful roster, only to get his knee shredded before he could finish the season.

All Burrow did after that was drag the worst offensive line in Super Bowl history to The Big Game, and lose by a mere three points to the superstar-laden Los Angeles Rams. Then, Burrow was down three starters on the o-line the next postseason and came within three points of returning to the Super Bowl, only to fall to Mahomes and the Chiefs in Kansas City.

We'll write off the 2023 season because Burrow, once again, through all the battering he takes behind that subpar pass blocking unit, had a career-threatening injury to his right throwing wrist. And we all saw what happened last year, when a playoff appearance likely would've meant Burrow ran away with the NFL MVP award.

Tell me something, Tom Brady: Could you have gone on the road in the playoffs against a No. 1 seed in Year 2, one season removed from a devastating knee injury, called your own plays when the headset went out, and driven your team to victory? I seriously doubt it, babe.

Joe Burrow has done plenty for the personnel department: Public demands to sign players and single-handedly changing the Bengals' culture

Anyone with gray matter that fires properly knows that Joe Burrow is the epitome of a coach on the field. He has a mastery of leverage, pre-snap tells, post-snap recognition, off-schedule plays, and pinpoint accuracy the likes of which the game has rarely seen. He's also had to overcome far more organizational obstacles than any of his peers.

Like come on. Patrick Mahomes went to Andy Reid and a Chiefs team that was already a fringe championship contender. The Bills made the playoffs before Allen arrived, and he had two full seasons of on-field development before anyone talked smack about him. Jackson's offense was built around him in Baltimore, which is one of the premier organizations in the NFL.

For Brady to suggest that Burrow doesn't give his input to the personnel department is also inaccurate. How does he think Ja'Marr Chase became a Bengal? Pretty sure the fact that Chase was Burrow's teammate at LSU might've had something to do with it!

Plus, there's annual offseason contract drama in Cincinnati. We've seen it with Chase, Tee Higgins, and countless others — with Trey Hendrickson being the latest. Burrow isn't shy about calling out the team to pay players when he meets with the media. He's gone to bat for his guys countless times. If that's not "doing enough" for the personnel department, Tom Brady, I don't know what is.

One area Brady has somewhat of an argument is taking a pay cut. He often did that in New England to help Belichick build the roster. On the other hand, not every NFL QB is in a position where they're active in the league and married to a supermodel whose net worth is *checks notes* four hundred million dollars.

In fact, I don't think anyone in the history of football was ever in a better position to take a pay cut than Brady was because of Gisele. Patriots fans, you better give Gisele her proper flowers for your dynasty.

To me, it's only a matter of time before Burrow leads the Bengals to a Super Bowl triumph. Why Brady felt the need to call him out so hard is beyond me. Burrow has done everything in his power to will Cincinnati to its first Lombardi Trophy. It's not his fault the rest of the organization hasn't lived up to the gaudy standard he established as a one-man revolutionary force for cultural change.

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