Tom Brady on injured hand: ‘I’m not talking about it’
If Tom Brady’s injured hand is bothering him, he certainly wasn’t going to let on when meeting with reporters on Friday.
“I’m not talking about it,” the New England Patriots quarterback said with a smile when asked about his throwing hand.
He answered the same way several times in a brief news conference, throwing in some “We’ll see” comments when asked more than once about how his hand will affect him for Sunday’s AFC Championship Game against the Jacksonville Jaguars.
When one reporter asked why he was wearing gloves to the indoors news conference, he simply answered, “I’ve worn them before.”
After missing all but the warm-ups at Thursday’s practice and being listed on that day’s injury report as “DNP,” or “did not participate,” Brady was listed as “limited participation” for Friday’s practice. He was also given a status of “questionable” for Sunday’s game.
“I was out there,” was all Brady would say about Friday’s practice, specifically declining to say whether he threw any footballs. When asked if he participated in the full practice, he responded with a simple “Yeah.”
{“url”:”https://twitter.com/Patriots/status/954425368357687296″,”author_name”:”New England Patriots”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/Patriots”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;&#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Patriots?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;#Patriots&#lt;/a&#gt; QB Tom Brady live press conference: &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/fFg0vDEK8M”&#gt;https://t.co/fFg0vDEK8M&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;– New England Patriots (@Patriots) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/Patriots/status/954425368357687296?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;January 19, 2018&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}
Bill Belichick wasn’t much more forthcoming in his own news conference Friday morning.
The Patriots head coach deflected questions about Brady’s hand, according to a report from ESPN.
“We gave out the injury report yesterday and we’ll update it today,” he told reporters.
When questioned about his level of concern over the injury, Belichick said, “I don’t know. We’ll see.” He offered another “I don’t know” when asked about how much the injury complicates the planning process for the game.
The Boston Herald reported Wednesday that Brady jammed his throwing hand during practice after someone accidentally ran into him. X-rays showed no structural damage to the hand.
Brady had been scheduled to speak to the media on Wednesday and Thursday, but the first session was canceled due to him receiving treatment on his hand. Thursday’s media availability was then postponed to Friday.
The NFL Network reported that the two-time NFL MVP and four-time Super Bowl MVP will likely play in Sunday’s game. Brady has guided the Patriots to five Super Bowl titles, including last year’s comeback win over the Atlanta Falcons in Super Bowl LI.
Veteran backup Brian Hoyer, who the Patriots signed after trading former backup Jimmy Garoppolo to the San Francisco 49ers on Oct. 30, took all reps in Thursday’s practice.
