Hit the quarterback and risk a penalty that costs your team the game, or let him go and cost your team the game?

It’s a Catch-TB12.

Chiefs linebacker Breeland Speaks admitted he did not bring Tom Brady down in the closing minutes of Sunday night’s showdown because he thought the Patriots quarterback had thrown the ball — and finishing his tackle could have been part of the league’s crackdown on hits to the passer.

Instead, on the third-down play in the closing minutes of a game Kansas City led 33-30, Brady escaped the sack, surveyed the field and then dove into the end zone for a 4-yard touchdown run in a game New England would win, 43-40.

“I thought the ball was gone,” Speaks told reporters after the game. “Because I thought the ball was gone, I didn’t take him to the ground. It sucks, it sucks. You’re supposed to finish plays like that.”

If you finish plays like that and Brady, who had pump-faked, had indeed thrown the ball, Speaks likely would have been penalized. Speaks, with his arms around Brady’s midsection, simply stopped playing.

“I don’t know what happened,” Brady said, when asked about Speaks’ near sack. “They doubled three guys on the play, and I’m just glad. I’ve got to watch [the film of the play], but I got close to the goal line and figured I’d just try to get it in. We needed it.”

Speaks won’t let this happen again. Meaning: Be ready for more flags that fly that let him blow the game in another fashion.

“It’s just the risk we’ve got to take now,” said Speaks, a rookie, second-round pick out of Mississippi. “Whether we get the flag or not, whatever happens, you’ve just got to go ahead and push through it and go ahead and make that play.”

The renewed focus on protecting the quarterbacks already cost one defensive player his season. It may have just cost another team a game.