Brady backs mates’ choices
As far as Tom Brady is concerned, if any of his teammates want to skip the team’s trip to the White House, that’s “their choice,” and the Patriots quarterback has no objection.
In an interview yesterday with Mike Florio of PFT Live, Brady spoke about how, at this point, six of his teammates are not planning to attend the White House when President Donald Trump hosts the Patriots to celebrate their Super Bowl LI victory.
Not every player who declined is doing so on political grounds, but some are. Brady, who has publicly spoken about his friendship with Trump, stated again that he was not able to make the last one because of a scheduling conflict.
“Well, everybody has their own choice,” Brady said. “There’s certain years, I know a couple years ago (in 2015 when President Barack Obama was in office), I wanted to go but then didn’t get the opportunity based on the scheduling. We didn’t get told until I think like 10 days before we were going, and at that point, I had something that I’d been planning for months and couldn’t get there.”
Brady did attend after his Michigan Wolverines won the NCAA national championship in 1997 during Bill Clinton’s presidency and the three times the Pats won the Super Bowl following the 2001, 2003 and 2004 seasons while George W. Bush was in the Oval Office.
“I was able to go, we were part of that ’97 national championship team in college and went, and it really is a great experience,” Brady said. “Just putting politics aside, it never really was a political thing. At least it never was for me. It was just always something that was a privilege to be able to do because it really meant you won a championship and you could experience something cool with your team, with your teammates.”
Brady deferred to his teammates’ judgment.
“So everyone has their own choice,” he said. “And it’s in the offseason. These days are valuable for everybody. You only get so much time with your family and friends, and if people don’t want to go, they don’t want to go, and that’s their choice.”
The Seattle Seahawks received a warning from the NFL but will get no other penalty after the league reviewed the circumstances of how the team handled disclosing an injury to cornerback Richard Sherman, according to NFL sources.
The NFL determined the Seahawks violated the league’s injury report policy by not listing Sherman after he suffered a knee injury that head coach Pete Carroll called “significant.”
However, the league also determined that the Seahawks did not violate the rule intentionally but were instead guilty of misinterpreting the rule by thinking they did not have to disclose Sherman had a knee injury because he did not miss practices or any game snaps due to the injury. The penalty would have been a secondround pick.
The Seahawks already lost a fifth-round pick for violating rules for offseason workouts.
The Chargers announced season ticket prices for their return to Los Angeles, where they will play the next two years at 30,000-seat StubHub Center in Carson, Calif.
The team said prices for season tickets range from $70 to $375 per game, $150 more than the highest price of the Rams, the other Los Angeles team.
In 2019, the Chargers will join the Rams in owner Stan Kroenke’s $2.6 billion stadium in Inglewood, Calif.