Tom Brady Feels NFL Players Are Punished Like No Other Profession

Tom Brady is not fan of the NFL penalizing large sums of money for minor violations of league's policy.

Tom Brady Feels NFL Players Are Punished Like No Other Profession

Tom Brady and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell (Image via IMAGO)

Tom Brady is in a position to call out the NFL for imposing inflated monetary penalties on players for minor violations. Players are liable to a fine for committing unsportsmanlike conduct, an altercation with another player, arguing with the officials, making banned gestures, or even wearing the wrong pair of cleats.

The NFL is a lucrative league where players earn generous money. However, that doesn’t apply to everyone, especially the practice squad and players on rookie and veteran minimum contracts.

Players don’t earn the exact amount written in their contracts. States take a part of the money as taxes—and after monthly expenditures, players are left with a nominal amount, as pointed out by former Steelers Joe Haden.

People hear $50 million and think you’ve got $50 million sitting in the bank. That’s not how it works. You look up after all that and realize you might only have around $1 million left… You start understanding real quick that a $50 million contract is not actually $50 million.

Haden recently said

On occasion, players have to pay fine to the league, deducted from their salary. It hinders their livelihoods. Tom Brady isn’t a fan of it. If a player earns two million, and he has to pay $500,000 for committing a foul, then he’s basically losing a quarter of his salary.

“I hate that,” Brady said on the Stick To Football podcast.

What job is like that in the world, where you make a mistake at your job and they come and go, Hey, we’re going to take your salary away? And then people are like, Yeah, you should take his salary away.

Tom Brady added

Per Spotrac, more than 500 individual player fines were issued by the league in 2025. This total includes roughly 428 on-field infractions and fines against more than 100 players for violating league policies.

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Tom Brady recalls how refusing a major surgery changed his life

The New England Patriots drafted Brady 199th overall in 2000. He received his big break in year two and led the team to a Super Bowl victory. By 2006, he had added two more rings.

Tom Brady Feels NFL Players Are Punished Like No Other Profession
Tom Brady (Image via IMAGO)

That year, Brady suffered a scary injury that needed a doctor’s attention. A specialist advised him to undergo surgery to fix his complications. The thought of a complicated surgery spooked him. To get a second opinion, he consulted Alex Guerrero (a practitioner of medicine and body coach).

Guerrero urged Brady to visit him in Los Angeles and promised to fix him within days.

So, I fly out there [to LA] and worked the adductors, lengthened and softened both muscles, my hips, all my glutes, basically relieved the tension on the tendon. And three days later, no more pain. The doctor said there was a 99% chance he’d have to cut my adductor tendon at some point. And to this day, nothing.

Brady said

The rest is history, as the saying goes. In 2007, Brady led the Patriots to a 16-0 season (NFL record), finished as the league leader in completion percentage (68.9), passing yards (4806), yards per attempt (8.7), touchdowns (50), and passer rating (117.2). The league awarded him the first of his three MVPs.

Before hanging up his boots, Brady won four more Super Bowls. He retired in 2023. In 2024, he signed a ten-year contract with FOX Sports as a broadcaster and became a minor stakeholder in the Las Vegas Raiders.

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