- Former teammates and comedians round on quarterback
- Brady appears to object to joke after Robert Kraft
Tom Brady took his share of barbs from comedians, former teammates and his longtime coach on Sunday night during a comedy roast on Netflix.
“It’s like a football game. You run with a game plan, and then you get to see kind of how the strategy goes, and then you adjust on the fly,” Brady said before the three-hour event. “This is what a locker room has been like for me for all these years. So it’s not like I’m used to people not making fun of me.”
An impressive lineup of comedians, former teammates and opponents took the stage. Host Kevin Hart said before the event that no topic was off limits, and Hart went on the offensive early with jokes about Brady’s ex-wife, Gisele Bündchen.
“Gisele gave you an ultimatum. She said you retire or we’re done. When you got a chance to go 8-9 and all it will cost you is your wife and your kids, you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do,” Hart said, referring to Brady coming out of a brief retirement in 2022 for one more season.
The only time Brady objected to a joke was when Jeff Ross made a reference to Patriots owner Robert Kraft and massages. In 2019, Kraft originally received a misdemeanor charge that he paid for sex at a Florida massage parlor. Prosecutors later dropped the charge after courts blocked the use of video from cameras installed by police inside the massage parlors.
In the sketch, Ross joked about Kraft offering Brady a massage when he first joined the Patriots. On Sunday, Brady walked up to Ross and said in his ear “don’t say that shit again”, but it was clearly caught on the microphone and heard by those watching the roast at home. It was not heard by those in attendance.
Later, Kraft and former Patriots coach Bill Belichick did a shot together on stage after some coaxing from Hart.
Belichick was fired in January after 24 seasons with the Patriots, and a lot has been written about friction between the six-time winning Super Bowl coach and owner over the past couple years.
After joking about this being like a reunion and “unlike many family reunions there are some people I am desperately trying to avoid”, Kraft praised Belichick for what the two accomplished.
“I want to say this is the greatest coach in the history of the game that did what no one else has done. And having Tom Brady and him was the greatest honor the good Lord gave me,” Kraft said.
