Tom Brady Jokes About Patriots' Scandals During Historic NFL Career on Video

Legendary quarterback Tom Brady poked fun at the New England Patriots' propensity for creating the wrong kind of headlines during their dynastic run with he and coach Bill Belichick at the fore.

While speaking with Brady (via Awful Announcing), Fox Sports colleague Colin Cowherd compared those Patriots teams to "a brilliant accounting firm" because that consistently delivered without a lot of drama. He contrasted them to the Philadelphia Eagles, who continue to win but have plenty of off-field subplots.

Brady pushed back on that assertion.

"Famously, New England isn't known for drama? I think we had more gates than Logan International Airport for 20 years," he said. "There was always some sort of drama happening with our team over the course of the year."

Any team that wins multiple championships over a sustained period is bound to develop its proverbial haters. In the case of New England, it didn't do much to build a lot of outside sympathy.

The Patriots and Belichick were fined a combined $750,000 in 2007 after the league determined the team was illicitly videotaping the signals of opposing coaches. Then came Deflategate in 2015, which centered around deflating footballs below the minimum standard in the 2014 AFC title game.

The general animus toward the Patriots during that period wasn't limited to rival fans.

ESPN's Don Van Natta Jr. and Seth Wickersham reported in 2015 that some NFL owners were frustrated with how commissioner Roger Goodell handled the initial spying scandal years earlier. The swift action on Deflategate was viewed as a "makeup call."

New England wasn't done, either, as another spying scandal emerged in 2019.

As time passes on, the six Super Bowl titles the Pats won with Brady and Belichick will live on forever. Some of the circumstances behind all of that winning — the multiple breaches of NFL rules, for example — will likely be lost to history.