Social media users share a quote attributed to football full-back Tom Brady. The quote actually stems from a satire article and was never said by Brady.
Examples can be seen here, here and here.
The quote reads: “Let me be absolutely clear, if anyone in this team kneels, I will walk. I’ll be off the field in a moment and out the door. Do not test me. Tom Brady. ”
Kneeling or “taking a knee” is a reference to athletes kneeling rather than standing in front of a match during the national anthem in protest of racial justice. Former San Francisco 49ers fullback Colin Kaepernick and a small number of other NFL players began kneeling during the national anthem in 2016 to protest a series of sensational police shootings involving African-Americans (here). Kaepernick has not played in the NFL since 2016, when he started the protests.
Reuters could find no evidence that Brady made a statement like this.
When Trump called on the NFL in 2017 to “fire or suspend” those who kneel during the national anthem (here), Brady said he disagreed and called his comments “divisive” (here, here).
During an interview with Oprah Winfrey in 2018, Brady expressed his thoughts on the knee during the national anthem. In response to a question about kneeling, Brady said there were good and healthy conversations coming out of his team’s locker rooms, emphasizing that they have respect and empathy for everyone.
Brady, who has won six of his nine Super Bowl appearances with the New England Patriots, was in the free agency last year after 20 seasons with them. He signed a $ 50 million two-year deal with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. The Buccaneers beat the Kansas City Chiefs 31-9 to win the Super Bowl on February 7, 2021.
One post here shows a screenshot of an article by America’s Last Line of Defense, a satire website.
A Google search for the quote shows that it came from the same satire site. The article can be seen here.
The website’s “about us” page explains: “Americaslastlineofdefense.com is a subsidiary of the” America’s Last Line of Defense “network of parody, satire and nonsense, or as Snopes called it before their war lost satire: Junk News ”.
VERDICT
Untrue. There is no evidence that Tom Brady said this. The quote has its origins in a satire article.
This article was produced by the Reuters Fact Check team. Read more about our fact-checking work here.