Nickell Robey-Coleman Made an Enormous Pre-Super Bowl Mistake

Nickell Robey-Coleman essentially ensured he will get targeted 20 times in Super Bowl LIII. The Los Angeles Rams cornerback, who will likely match up against Julian Edelman, had some unkind things to say about New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

Unlike his defensive pass interference in the NFC championship, Robey-Coleman is unlikely to get away with this gaffe.

Here’s what Robey-Coleman told Bleacher Report about Brady:

"“Age has definitely taken a toll. For him to still be doing it, that’s a great compliment for him. But I think that he’s definitely not the same quarterback he was.’’"

*Sighs*

*Shakes head*

What are you doing?

Perhaps age is taking a toll on Brady. Perhaps Brady’s statistical decline was due to the fact that he’s 41 years old (and not the reported MCL sprain he suffered during Week 10). Perhaps Robey-Coleman has supreme confidence he’s going to posterize Edelman and Brady in the Super Bowl.

But the first rule about playing Tom Brady is you don’t talk about Tom Brady. You don’t make him angry. When he’s angry — about Spygate or Deflategate or being “too old” — he is, to use Brady’s words, “the baddest mother [expletive] on the planet.” In 2007 after the Patriots were shamed for Spygate, Brady broke passing records while ruthlessly curb stomping teams in blowouts. After serving a Deflategate suspension, Brady set the record for touchdown to interception ratio (28:2), and won Super Bowl LI by overcoming the largest deficit in Super Bowl history (25 points). After feeling like he’d been called old for all of 2018, Brady beat the Chiefs at Arrowhead Stadium in overtime.

Brady feeds off the doubt — he gets high on hate.

Brady had surely been putting up bulletin board material from media members like ESPN’s Max Kellerman, who’d been proclaiming that Brady is finished. The media members that knock Brady exist in a world where criticism gets viewership. When retired Patriots linebacker and ESPN analyst Tedy Bruschi called out Kellerman for being bad at his job, he argued he was excelling in his job, because the Patriots were talking about him. (In other words, he doesn’t have to be right. He just has to be at the center of the conversation. And Brady must know this by now — that the criticism isn’t really genuine in many cases.)

Kellerman doesn’t have to face the consequences. Robey-Coleman may.

Brady will target Edelman and, in turn, Robey-Coleman. Because instead of proving the haters in the media wrong, Brady can prove Robey-Coleman wrong, which will have a translatable impact in winning Super Bowl LIII.

R.I.P. Robey-Coleman.