Tom Brady’s insistence on working for Fox while owning a piece of the Raiders creates potential complications beyond the restrictions on his access to team facilities and practices. When it comes to criticizing game officials, there’s a line he can’t cross.
As the league has previously explained it, Brady is prohibited from being “egregiously critical of officiating” or “call[ing] into question the integrity of an official or the crew.”
On Sunday in Detroit, Brady criticized multiple officiating decisions. The overriding question is whether the league office will regard the criticism as “egregious.”
In the third quarter, Packers linebacker Brenton Cox Jr. knocked Lions quarterback Jared Goff to the ground after a throw. The officials called Cox for roughing the passer.
“Not much at all,” Brady said over the replay. “It’s coming off the block. His face is buried. I don’t know about that. I mean . . . that’s a tough one.”
Fox rules analyst (and former NFL senior V.P. of officiating) Dean Blandino agreed. “He’s coming off the block,” Blandino said. “You really want to see more force there. It’s almost like he’s just trying to keep himself up. There’s no real extension. I don’t like that as roughing.”
“I don’t like it either,” Brady said.
In the fourth quarter, after Lions linebacker Derrick Barnes was flagged for an illegal hit on Packers running back MarShawn Lloyd, Brady was blunt.
“What?” Brady said. “There’s no way. . . . Oh, come on, man. Come on. [Jordan] Love throws it over the middle. There’s linebackers in the middle. He’s just turning his right shoulder away from it. That’s allowed 99 out of 100 [times]. . . . It’s a bang-bang play. I know in super slow-mo every little minute frame looks like a lot, but when you’re on the field, you’ve got to pursue that ball. If [Lloyd] catches it, [Barnes] needs force to knock him on the ground. He needs force to knock that ball out. . . . He can’t go in there and put his hand on him.”
Later, during Detroit’s game-winning drive, Brady sounded off on a questionable roughing the passer call, after Packers defensive tackle Karl Brooks hit Lions quarterback Jared Goff following a throw.
“Oh my goodness, what is that?” Brady said. “There’s no way! Brooks on the tackle. Kind of makes a great play. It’s a bang-bang play. He rolls off his body. It’s a great throw by Goff. It’s definitely not roughing the passer. I mean, you just — you’re just ripping through the line of scrimmage to try to get the quarterback on the ground. Look, I love Goff standing there in the pocket. But you just can’t keep tacking on 15 yards.”
Blandino agreed with Brady’s assessment again. “It wasn’t late,” Blandino said. “They might have said head/neck area. But this is not head/neck area. His head is up. That’s teach-tape tackle. That’s not roughing the passer.”
Each of the calls seemed unwarranted. But the league’s rules don’t create an exception based on accuracy of the criticism. Team personnel (including owners) can only say so much when it comes to publicly criticizing officials.
Is it “egregious”? The folks at Merriam-Webster define the term as “very noticeable.” If that’s the same definition the NFL uses, Brady’s comments qualify.
It has nothing to do with Brady’s role as a broadcaster. (If anything, Kevin Burkhardt’s criticism of the calls was even stronger.) However, the league has a policy that muzzles team personnel, including owners.
If Brady gets dinged for this, it’s not because he’s working for Fox. It’s because he’s working for Fox while owning a piece of the Raiders.
Packers Clips
The Packers have a couple of impact players who are dealing with injuries.
According to Ian Rapoport of NFL Network, linebacker Zaire Franklin is dealing with a hairline fracture in his leg, while center Sean Rhyan is believed to have suffered a high-ankle sprain.
Franklin’s injury occurred in practice last week. He missed Sunday’s game against the Lions but is expected to return without missing much more time. The team did not place him on injured reserve, which is another indication of his status.
Rhyan went down during the first half of Sunday’s loss to Detroit. If his high-ankle sprain diagnosis is confirmed, he’s likely to be out for four-to-six weeks.
Green Bay has a short week coming up, as they will host the Panthers on Thursday night.
Once an NFL offense gets inside the 20-yard line, coming away with at least a field goal should be just about a sure thing. It wasn’t for the Packers on Sunday in Detroit.
Packers kicker Trey Smack missed a 26-yard field goal wide right, and had a 35-yard field goal blocked, in the Packers’ 20-17 loss to the Lions.
How rare is it for an NFL kicker to miss field goals that short? So far this season, NFL kickers are 167-for-170 on field goals from inside 37 yards. Smack had two of the three misses on Sunday, and the other was a 23-yarder by Bears kicker Cairo Santos that was blocked by the Vikings in Week 2.
The last time a kicker missed two field goals of 35 yards or shorter in the same game was seven years ago, when Patriots kicker Mike Nugent missed two in a game against the Browns. Nugent was cut afterward.
Packers coach Matt LaFleur says Smack won’t get cut. At least not yet. But it’s safe to say Smack’s seat is getting hot.
Packers head coach Matt LaFleur got heated with officials several times during Sunday’s 20-17 loss to the Lions, but he didn’t want to make them the focus of his postgame comments.
LaFleur said there were “some tough calls,” but that his team needed to rise above them. Among those tough calls were two roughing the passer penalties and an unnecessary roughness call on defensive tackle Devonte Wyatt for a hit that came without a clear whistle to stop play as Lions wide receiver Amon-Ra St. Brown got up to continue running.
While LaFleur didn’t want to unload on the officials, safety Xavier McKinney was more willing to go there. He said it is not “great officiating” and that the calls are “kind of f—-ing up” the team’s games. McKinney knows that could earn him a monetary penalty from the league, but he said he’s fine with that because he feels he’s telling the truth.
“I would rather get fined and try to help my team out because I see what’s going on, and it’s killing us,” McKinney said, via Rob Demovsky of ESPN.com. “We all see it. We all see what’s going on. Everyone sees what’s going on, the fans see what’s going on, we see what’s going on when we’re out there.”
All of the calls can’t explain everything about the loss — Packers rookie Trey Smack missed a 26-yard field goal and had a 35-yarder blocked at the end of drives that could have also been finished with touchdowns — but McKinney’s comments make it clear that they played a role.
Mike Tomlin has no qualms regarding a decision from Dan Campbell that may have seemed curious on the surface.
Facing fourth and one from the Detroit 24 with 4:53 to play, Campbell opted to go for it. The play resulted in a two-yard loss, and a very short field for the Packers.
“I thought we would get it, number one,” Campbell said after the game. “I really believed we would get that. Number two, I knew we would get the ball back if it didn’t work out. Those were the two thoughts.”
After Sunday night’s Chiefs-Seahawks game, NBC’s Mike Tirico asked Tomlin for his take on Campbell’s decision.
“It centers around elite quarterback play,” Tomlin said. “When you got elite quarterback play, and particularly when you’re playing elite quarterback play, you want to make sure your guy at least has a chance to have the ball at the end of the game. And that’s what that decision appeared to be about for me. If he punts that ball the way Jordan Love and company has been operating, it’s not possible, it’s probable that they’re gonna matriculate the ball down the field and win the game. And so what he did by going for it, he was either gonna be successful and keep the ball for his quarterback, or he was at least gonna give his quarterback an opportunity to answer. I was always ready to make that decision when I had Big Ben [Roethlisberger], for example, and I was facing another elite quarterback.”
The Lions got the ball back because their defense stiffened, forcing a field goal try. And because the Detroit special-teams unit blocked the 35-yard try.
But even if the Packers had scored a touchdown, the drive started with 4:50 to play. The Lions would have had a chance to answer.
And that’s only if the Lions first failed to gain a yard on fourth down by handing it to Jahmyr Gibbs.
It’s another tangible example of the key differences between analytics and feel. The coach, considering all circumstances, knew it was the right call.
That said, the age of analytics had made it much easier to do something that would have once been ignored as unconventional, since reliance on the math has torn down the wall between what is and isn’t “normal” for a coach to do.
And Tomlin’s past actions give his words even more credence. Via NBC Sports research, Campbell was the first coach to go for it on fourth down inside his own 25 in a tie game since Week 1 of the 2014 season.
That day, Tomlin’s Steelers ran a fake punt from their own 20 in a 27-27 game against the Browns. It happened with 9:48 to play in a 27-27 game. The play worked, the drive later stalled at the 50, and the Steelers won with a walk-off field goal, 30-27.
Trey Smack missed a 26-yard field goal wide right on the Packers’ first drive. He had a 35-yard go-ahead field goal blocked by DJ Wonnum with 3:21 left, which ended up being the Packers’ final drive in a 20-17 loss.
The sixth-round rookie has missed seven kicks this season — three from 40-49 yards, two extra points and the two field goals on Sunday. (Bears kicker Cairo Santos is the only other kicker in the NFL to have even one miss or block from 35 yards or closer as he had a 23-yard attempt blocked by the Vikings, per ESPN Research.)
Packers coach Matt LaFleur, who didn’t know the late attempt was blocked, said Smack will remain as the team’s kicker.
“Certainly, you never want to go through it, but Trey’s a guy that I think he’s proven that he can do it, and I know he can do it,” LaFleur said postgame. “We’ve got to wipe this one clean and got to move on and hopefully we can be a little bit better.”
Smack is the first NFL kicker to miss two field goals from 35 yards or less in the same game since Mike Nugent did it for the Patriots in a 27-13 win againt the Browns in 2019, according to Josh Dubow of the Associated Press. Further, Smack is the first kicker to do that in game his team lost by three points or fewer since Shaun Suisham did it for Steelers in a 21-18 loss to Raiders in 2013.
The AFC North and NFC North are loaded, to an unprecedented extent in NFL history.
All eight teams in the two North divisions are above .500 after Week 7. Never before has the league had two divisions with every team having a winning record heading into Week 8.
The Browns lead the AFC North at 5-2 because they have the head-to-head tiebreaker with the 5-2 Steelers. The Bengals are 4-2 and the Ravens are 4-3.
The Vikings are 6-0, the only remaining undefeated team in the NFC. The Bears are in second place in the NFC North at 5-2, followed by the Lions at 4-2 and the Packers at 4-3.
If the playoffs started today, the Browns would be the No. 3 seed in the AFC. The Steelers would be the No. 6 seed and the Bengals would be the No. 7 seed. The Ravens would be out of the playoffs.
In the NFC, the Vikings would be the No. 1 seed and the three other teams would be the three wild cards: The Bears would be the No. 5 seed, the Lions would be No. 6 and the Packers would be No. 7 — as they have been each of the last three years.
We’re a long way from the playoffs, but right now, it looks like most of the biggest games down the stretch will be played in the North.
The Packers-Lions game was drunk. The officiating might have been drunker.
The Lions prevailed 20-17 on a 22-yard field goal by Jake Bates on the final play.
The Lions are 4-2 and the Packers 4-3.
The teams combined for 739 yards but only 37 points. They were a combined 3-of-9 in the red zone, had a combined three turnovers and three times turned it over on downs.
The Lions inexplicably went for it on fourth-and-1 at their own 24 with 4:53 left in a tie game. Keisean Nixon stopped Lions running back Jahmyr Gibbs for a 2-yard loss, setting up the Packers in field-goal range.
Green Bay reached the Detroit 17 before rookie kicker Trey Smack missed his second field goal of the day and his seventh of the season. His 35-yard attempt was blocked by DJ Wonnum with 3:21 left. He also missed from 26 yards earlier in the game but made a 43-yarder with 7:10 left to tie it at 17-17.
The Lions then drove 71 yards in 10 plays, with Gibbs taking a knee at the Green Bay 3 to set up a last-play field goal.
The Packers had two questionable roughing the passer calls, including one on Karl Brooks on the game-winning drive. Brenton Cox Jr. also had one in the second half. Jordan Love had a questionable grounding call. Lions linebacker Derrick Barnes had a questionable unnecessary roughness penalty.
Fox analyst Tom Brady was critical of all four calls.
The Lions gained 415 yards, with Jared Goff going 22-of-32 for 303 yards and two touchdowns. Jameson Williams had five catches for 91 yards and two touchdowns. Amon-Ra St. Brown led the way with nine receptions for 153 yards.
Gibbs had 29 carries for 116 yards and five catches for 27 yards but lost a fumble, his second of the season.
Packers linebacker Isaiah McDuffie recovered both Lions’ fumbles.
Love was 27-of-45 for 274 yards with two touchdowns and an interception. Brian Branch had the pick in his return from an Achilles injury that ended his 2025 season.
Josh Jacobs, who was returning from unpaid leave that kept him out six games, had 11 carries for 36 yards and five catches for 55 yards and a touchdown but couldn’t come down with a catch in the end zone on the Packers’ final drive. Christian Watson caught five passes for 57 yards.
Jameson Williams’ second touchdown of the day has the Lions back in the lead.
The Lions wide receiver scored on a 10-yard reception after getting a 16-yard touchdown in the first half. It’s the second game in a row Williams has scored two touchdowns.
The Lions lead 17-10.
Detroit drove 80 yards in 10 plays after the Packers took a 14-10 lead after the Lions’ second fumble of the game. Center Cade Mays was responsible for both fumbles, though that’s not the way it goes down in the stats.
Mays inadvertently knocked the ball out of Jahmyr Gibbs’ arm with 19 seconds left in the first half and then had an aborted snap on the second snap of the second half.
The Lions have outgained the Packers 314 to 248.
Goff is 18-of-22 for 262 yards and two touchdowns, and Williams has five catches for 91 yards and two touchdowns.
Dan Campbell wasn’t happy with the way the first half ended. The Lions coach will be less thrilled with how the second half began.
The Lions, who entered with only one fumble, have lost two fumbles in the last 1:07 of game time and center Cade Mays was responsible for both. Mays ran into running back Jahmyr Gibbs and knocked the ball out with 19 seconds left in the first half and the Lions on the doorstep of the end zone. On the second play from scrimmage in the second half, Mays had an aborted snap.
Linebacker Isaiah McDuffie recovered both.
McDuffie’s second recovery set up Josh Jacobs’ 25-yard catch-and-run to the end zone. Jacobs, who is making his 2026 debut after returning from paid leave, tip-toed the sideline.
His touchdown has the Packers on top 14-10 with 12:14 left in the third quarter.
Jacobs has six carries for 12 yards and three catches for 42 yards and a touchdown.
