Tom Brady has paid his share of NFL fines and never lost sleep over them. What bothers him, though, is the fan watching from home who hears that a player got docked $75,000 and doubles down on why the player deserves to pay the amount. Brady believes there isn’t a job on earth that works this way, and he isn’t talking about himself. It’s a very different reality for a player earning around $2–5 million who loses approximately $75,000.
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According to Brady, the situation is much more troublesome than it looks from above.
“What they start doing is they start fining you $50,000, $75,000,” Brady said on the Stick to Football podcast. “And I’m saying like, I hate that. I hate the fact that, like, you sign a contract for $2 million a year or $5 million a year. And it’s so easy for someone to say, ‘Give me $75,000’ or ‘Give me $50,000.’
“It’s your second offense, that’s $100,000; that’s your third offense, $200,000. … What job is like that in the world where you make a mistake at your job, and they come and they go, ‘Hey, we’re going to take your salary away.’ Then people are like, ‘Yeah, you should take his salary away.'”
It’s one thing if Brady was fined that amount, having been one of the top earners in the league during his career. In his final season, Brady received two unnecessary roughness penalties.
Tom Brady says the NFL takes $100,000 from a player for one mistake and fans cheer for it. “What other job on earth works that way?” “What they start doing is they start fining you $50K, $75K and I hate that. You sign a contract for $2 million a year, $5 million a year…” “And Show more
The legendary QB was fined $16,444 for unnecessary roughness in his last football game. The quarterback’s fine was considerably higher than Ryan Jensen’s unnecessary roughness penalty on the same play, as he had been fined for on-field conduct earlier in the season as well. In Week 5, Brady received an $11,139 fine for attempting to kick Grady Jarrett.
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Oct 5, 2025; Inglewood, California, USA; Tom Brady looks on before the game between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Washington Commanders at SoFi Stadium. Mandatory Credit: Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images
Brady, with $15 million guaranteed in 2022, earned $833,333.33 per game in his final season. This meant that his fines were barely a fraction of his per-game salary. However, in Keith Smith’s case in 2023, he would have lost a huge chunk of his $2.35 million salary in that one game alone.
In 2023, the Atlanta Falcons veteran was fined $87,000 for using his helmet illegally during a play. Per the NFL Players Association’s JC Tretter, it was more than what the fullback would make in a week. A coach had also reached out to the league for more clarity on the correct way to do what Smith was fined for, but got no answer. In the end, it was found that Smith never violated the rules.
On some occasions, players wait an entire week before receiving news about their fines; sometimes it is after they already played in the following week’s Thursday Night Football game. This is because the league’s punishment announcements come out on Saturdays. The case of Amon-Ra St. Brown in 2023 comes to mind. The Lions wide receiver was fined $43,709 for unnecessary roughness, even though it hadn’t been flagged by the officials during the game.
While reprimanding players when they go beyond the limits is necessary, Tretter’s NFLPA piece cited a “widening disconnect between enforcing the rules in the spirit of protecting players from extremely dangerous play to over-regulating and penalizing players for playing an inherently dangerous game.”
This is not the first time Brady has spoken about the league’s fines, with him addressing the new taunting rule in 2021. Though he didn’t explicitly use the word ‘fines’ in his message, the rules for taunting see both on-field team penalties and off-field individual penalties.
Team repercussions for taunting on the field include a 15-yard penalty and an automatic first down if the defense has taunted the offense. On an individual level, players get ejected for two taunting violations in one game and even have to pay fines of $11,593 for a first offense and $17,389 for a second.
Besides unnecessary roughness and unsportsmanlike conduct towards an opposing player, other fines come if a player is found guilty of other unsportsmanlike or prohibited conduct, and conduct detrimental to the integrity of the game. According to Sportico, there are designated baselines in each category. If the fine makes up more than 10% of the player’s weekly pay, it is to be reduced.
Perhaps the NFL has widened its horizons when it comes to fining players. But for a player waiting on a Saturday to find out how much they owe for something that wasn’t even flagged on the field, putting in extra effort to keep themselves from erring can only go so far. As Brady put it, there isn’t another job on earth that works that way.