Ray Lewis is a surefire Hall of Famer that now works as a broadcaster for ESPN covering the NFL. He recently appeared on Stephen A. Smith's radio show, and he made some startling assertions regarding another future Hall of Famer, New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady.

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According to Next Impulse Sports, Lewis and Smith were discussing last weekend's divisional round games of the NFL playoffs, and their focus obviously turned to the now-infamous Dez Bryant play that everyone agrees was a catch, but for some reason is not a catch according to the rulebook.

They of course started focusing on how the rules the NFL has put in place are causing obvious plays to be ruled incorrectly because of minor technicalities. The conversation started to migrate toward other games that have seen similar situations, and naturally, they ended up on the first play that sparked such a monumental debate, the "Tuck Rule" from the Patriots-Raiders game in 2001.

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Lewis goes on to discuss how the game and rule affected Tom Brady's legacy, saying, "The only reason we know who Tom Brady is, because of a tuck rule! There's no such thing as a tuck rule! If the ball is in your hand, and I knock it out your hand, whether it's going backwards, forwards, lateral, sideways, however it's coming out, that's a freaking fumble!

"But guess what we created? We created a freaking tuck rule!"

Lewis goes on to say that if that play was ruled a fumble, which everyone but the referees agreed at the time that it was, then the Raiders win that football game, and Tom Brady does not lead the Patriots to a massive upset of the Rams in the Super Bowl.

While his point makes sense, it still seems likely that Brady would have turned into the great player that he has become, and he probably would have won a couple of Super Bowls anyway.