Harrison: Brady comment was in jest
FOXBOROUGH - Tom Brady said yesterday he wasn’t bothered by comments former teammate Rodney Harrison, now an NBC analyst, made about a pair of roughing-the-passer penalties Brady drew from the Baltimore Ravens.
In a halftime segment during Sunday night’s Steelers-Chargers game, Harrison took issue with a roughing-the-passer penalty against the Ravens’ Terrell Suggs, who was penalized after grazing Brady’s knee, and termed it a “horrible call.’’
Harrison added: “Tom Brady, if you’re listening, take off the skirt and put on some slacks. Toughen up.’’
“Rodney’s like my brother,’’ Brady told WEEI yesterday. “I love Rodney. There’s nothing Rodney could ever say that would bother me. He’s one of my great friends and teammates. If I was a football player, I’d want to be Rodney Harrison. There’s nobody that played the game like Rodney. He played with all heart.
“It’s fun to see him on TV. He hits as hard on TV as he did when he was playing, which is hard to believe. But he finds a way to get after everybody.’’
Harrison told WEEI later he sent Brady a text message saying he “was going to bust his chops,’’ and was stunned when he received “about 30 e-mails and 30 texts’’ complaining about his comments.
“My gosh, it’s unbelievable, the kind of backlash with this,’’ Harrison said. “Tom and I, we’ve been friends for years. There’s no other person, no other football player, maybe other than Junior Seau, that I have more respect for.
“It was a joke, and everyone’s getting all bent out of shape,’’ Harrison said. “This guy’s directly responsible for me having two Super Bowl rings on my fingers, and you think I’m going to call him out?
“It’s one thing to criticize a guy if he’s not playing well. But to question a guy like Tom Brady, who I feel like is one of the toughest guys I’ve ever been around . . . it’s totally absurd, ridiculous, that people would actually think that I would take a shot at Tom Brady.’’
“He did have a physical,’’ Belichick told WEEI. “We haven’t done anything yet. Is it a possibility? Yes.’’
WEEI asked Belichick about Seau’s contention that he only had six games in him this season.
“I don’t know about all that,’’ Belichick said. “If a player is playing he is playing whether it’s four games, six games, eight games, or 10 games. That’s what it is. I haven’t talked to Junior about that. I don’t really know anything about the four-game, six-game, 10-game thing.’’
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. 
