Tom Brady roasted on Twitter after appearing to lose track of downs on Bucs' final drive

Tom Gatto

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Tom Brady roasted on Twitter after appearing to lose track of downs on Bucs' final drive image

Tom Brady appeared to commit a mental error at the worst possible time Thursday night. The Buccaneers quarterback signaled that he thought he had one more play after turning the ball over on downs to the Bears late in the fourth quarter.

Tampa Bay needed just a field goal to win and was trying to get into position for it. The Bucs had a first-and-10 at their 37 when Brady:

MORE: Live score, updates from Bucs' loss to Bears

Threw incomplete to Mike Evans.

Threw a 4-yard dumpoff to Ke'Shawn Vaughn.

Threw incomplete to Rob Gronkowski.

Threw incomplete to Cameron Brate.

Brady put up four fingers after the last pass as if to ask, "Isn't it fourth down?"

He said after the game that  he made a bad decision to throw downfield.

"I knew we needed a chunk and I was thinking about more yardage and then, you know, it was just, it was bad execution. We had a great opportunity there. So just didn’t execute when we needed to,” Brady told reporters after the game," he said in response to one question.

"Yeah, we just, you’re up against the clock and . . . I knew we had to gain a chunk so I should have been thinking more first down instead of chunk on that down," he said when asked a second time.

Tampa Bay coach Bruce Arians told reporters after the game that Brady did not screw up the downs. "Yeah, he knew. He knew," Arians said (video clip starts at 26 seconds.)

Twitter isn't going to buy that. It has already up its mind about what happened. Everything from J.R. Smith to Ric Flair to Brady playing golf with Tiger Woods got used in the responses:

Tom Gatto

Tom Gatto Photo

Tom Gatto joined The Sporting News as a senior editor in 2000 after 12 years at The Herald-News in Passaic, N.J., where he served in a variety of roles including sports editor, and a brief spell at APBNews.com in New York, where he worked as a syndication editor. He is a 1986 graduate of the University of South Carolina.