The Patriots Cut This Bill Burr Joke at Tom Brady’s Team Hall of Fame Induction
Life was a little easier for Tom Brady at his induction into the New England Patriots Hall of Fame than it was during his red-hot Netflix roast. Brady was honored by the team last weekend — six Super Bowl rings will do that for a guy — with former teammates like Randy Moss, Wes Welker and Rob Gronkowski on hand to sing his praises. Nowhere during the ceremony did anyone come close to Nikki Glaser’s epic burn from last month: “You have seven rings. Well, eight now that Gisele gave hers back.”
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Bill Burr was on hand to warm up the crowd, but the Patriots decided to exercise some editorial control over his punchlines. And surprisingly, the joke that offended them the most wasn’t even at Brady’s expense — the target was Brady’s long-time rival, Peyton Manning.
Burr shared the joke on his Monday Morning Podcast. “I was gonna be like, ‘Peyton I always loved you. Because you know what? I always related to you more than I related to Tom Brady, because like you, I am also not the best quarterback in my family.”
That’s it? That’s the burn? It pales in comparison to the double-barreled blast Jeff Ross got off a month earlier: “Tom became a Patriot, moved up to New England, and on the first day of training camp, that scrawny rookie famously walked into the owner Robert Kraft’s office and said, ‘I’m the best decision your organization has ever made. Would you like a massage?’”
The Patriots have a well-earned reputation for sneaky moves, and Burr was impressed with the shifty way the team cut his mild joke. “So this is such a baller move,” he said. “They didn’t argue with us on it. I just went up there, and I had my little jokes on my cards. That slide, the one they were like, ‘Ah, we don’t know about this,’ and I thought, ‘I think it’s all right.’ They just took this slide out. I was like, ‘That’s fucking brilliant.’”
Imagine what the Patriots would have done if Burr tried to get away with Will Ferrell, er, Ron Burgundy’s Manning brother blast: “Underneath that dead robot of a quarterback, there is a scared little boy. How do I know this? You don’t see Eli Manning here tonight, do you? That’s because he’s afraid of Eli Manning. Eli Manning made Tom Brady his bitch!”
The really crazy thing? Peyton is a notorious comedy fan, a guy who showed up for the Brady roast and took a lot worse than what Burr was dishing out here. Were the Patriots afraid of offending Brady’s old rival?
This would never have happened if Bill Belichick was still in charge.
