Shannon Sharpe Labels Tom Brady a ‘Hypocrite’ for Siding With Azeez Al-Shaair Amid Ban for Trevor Lawrence Hit

Right now, it’s a war zone out here in the NFL community. One section of the fans is going after

Azeez Al-Shaair for his deadly hit on Trevor Lawrence that left the Jags QB concussed. While the other half is calling out the NFL to bring some urgent changes to their rulebook to stop QBs from sliding. Well, this got seven-time Super Bowl Champion Tom Brady to pick his side on the controversy that has enfolded in the NFL. And all we can say is that Unc wasn’t really pleased with Brady’s take on it.

Brady, who has long retired from his gridiron duties, dropped an appearance on

“The Herd with Colin Cowherd.” There, he surprisingly decided to side with Al-Shaair amid the ban he received from the NFL. Pointing out Lawrence sliding, Brady conveyed, “When you do that. I don’t think the onus of protecting an offensive quarterback who’s running should be on a defensive player. I don’t think that’s really fair to a defense.” And these exact comments didn’t go down well in Shannon Sharpe’s eyes, who called out Brady for his hypocrisy.In the Dec 6th episode of the Nightcap podcast, Unc labeled Brady as a wrong messenger, “Tom Brady is the wrong messenger. Because they had the rule changed [for him]. Does he not know the Brady rule was instituted to protect him? Because of a lot of these rules that they put in place to protect the quarterback, he benefited from them.” Although Sharpe could be right in his thoughts of calling out Brady for exploiting the rules himself and now switching sides, the question is, did he really?

Well, Brady was also on the receiving end of such a horror tackle in the early 2000s. That’s when the QBs weren’t really protected enough, and slowly, that notion started to change like we see now. Taking a trip back to his memory lane, Brady expressed,

“I remember in 2001. I think we played at Buffalo and I slid late. Nate Clements was the corner for the Bills, and he came up out of the secondary and absolutely crushed me. My helmet went flying off.” Fortunately, Brady wasn’t concussed like in the case of the Jags QB. Instead, he went back up and ran into the huddle for the next play.

Although Tom Brady might not be the right person to side with Al-Shaair on this one, the NFL community is going all out against the NFL on this one.

Fans want the NFL to tighten their stance on QBs sliding

We all know that the slide was brought into the picture to protect the QBs who have left the pocket or are scrambling to pick up rushing yards. But this seems to be a problem now, considering the split-second nature of football that left Trevor Lawrence concussed. It’s really difficult for a defender to change their direction at the last moment seeing a QB sliding. So some fans want the NFL to get rid of QBs sliding, “Get rid of the QB slide. We gotta stop having separate rules for the Quarterback. Once you leave the pocket. It should be on the QB to get down the same way WRs and RBs do.”

There was another who echoed the same sentiments, “They need to get rid of the QB slide. It’s unnecessary and bad for your health. And you’re putting the defense in an impossible situation. Just go down like any other offensive player.” Well, those reactions didn’t stop there, as one fan called Al-Shaair’s 3-game ban excessive, “3 games is excessive. Media forced y’all into that. Get rid of the slide in football. It’s a false sense of protection and is manipulated far too much.”

While we wait for the NFL’s stance on this controversy boiling within their backyard. They must come out with a decision. This would either protect the health of QBs or the defenders who are trying to help their team by stopping the opposition from gaining crucial yardage.