An NFL playoff game should never be about penalties, but that’s exactly what took over the narrative during the Kansas City Chiefs’ divisional round win over the Houston Texas on Saturday. 

Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes received two controversial calls en route to a 23–14 victory, benefitting from soft roughing the passer and unnecessary roughness penalties on the Texans defense. Those calls didn’t directly hand Kansas City its playoff win, but it sure sparked viral outrage over the perception that refs were giving preferential treatment to Mahomes and Co.

Fox analyst Tom Brady was asked on a recent episode of The Herd for his thoughts on the narrative that the league is protecting Mahomes from late hits.

Brady, who’s no stranger to getting bailed out by questionable calls during his New England Patriots days, offered a thoughtful answer that picked apart the league rules rather than the refs.

“There’s an aspect that I don’t like about some of these defensive rules,” Brady told Colin Cowherd. “The reality for me is that offensive players need to protect themselves. If they’re running full speed and the defenders are coming up—the only way to turn the ball over is to create force, you’re not going to blow on the football and knock its way out of a running back’s hands or a quarterback’s hands. 

“You’re trying to disrupt the pass, you’re trying to dislodge the ball. The only way to do that is with force, and there needs to be an aggressiveness to doing that. When quarterbacks become running backs and they’re out of the pocket, they should lose their protection.”

Brady’s pointed comments may apply the most to one instance in the fourth quarter when Mahomes took a blatant dive on the sidelines to try to draw a penalty. The refs didn’t bite on that one, and the Chiefs quarterback later admitted he “probably shouldn’t have done that.”

So far, the stats seem to back the perception that Mahomes and the Chiefs are getting a massive advantage when it comes to penalties in the playoffs, but what can be done about it?

Brady thinks the solution necessitates a league rule change on how quarterbacks are protected in the game.

“Who’s protecting the quarterback?” continued Brady. “We’re trying to say the referee should do it?... If you’re running with the ball, you should protect yourself. If you don’t want to get hit, you can go down, you can run out of bounds. But you can’t in essence have the defensive player come in at half speed and then you run over the defensive player because he’s afraid of getting a penalty. I think it’s just a disservice to the game.”

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This article was originally published on www.si.com as Tom Brady Weighed in on Patrick Mahomes, Chiefs Getting Controversial Calls.