Last year, Tom Brady officially became a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, purchasing a five percent stake. However, that was complicated by the fact that he had also signed a deal worth nearly $400 million to be Fox’s top color commentator for NFL coverage. “I’ll take conflict of interest for $500, Alex.”
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The NFL recognized that conflict of interest, to be sure, and put in place a set of restrictions specific to Brady. These generally limited him during the pre-production process for his Fox job. However, for some unknown reason, many of these restrictions were lifted ahead of the 2025 campaign.
The lifting of the restrictions (some, not all) didn’t cause much of a ripple in the NFL world. Well, not until Brady was seen in the Raiders‘ coaching booth during their Monday night game.
After calling a game from the commentator booth the previous day, it was not a great look seeing him in the coach’s booth for his team the very next day. But the NFL was not bothered by it, as they relayed in their statement on the matter.
“There are no policies that prohibit an owner from sitting in the coaches’ booth or wearing a headset during a game. Brady was sitting in the booth in his capacity as a limited partner. All personnel sitting in the booth must abide by policies that prohibit the use of electronic devices other than league-issued equipment such as a Microsoft Surface Tablet for the Sideline Viewing System,” the statement reads.
The NFL went on to describe further how Brady is restricted in his role as Fox’s color commentator: “Tom continues to be prohibited from going to a team facility for practices or production meetings. He may attend production meetings remotely but may not attend in person at the team facility or hotel…”
The reason we see Brady in the booth now is that when the Raiders play on Sundays, he’s not available to attend the game because of his job with Fox. But despite the NFL downplaying the incident, pundits like Mike Florio are not convinced that this situation with Brady is fair for all 32 teams. In fact, the NFL’s statement “pissed” Florio right off.
“They’re putting it on the teams to guard the fox that the NFL dropped into their henhouse… If the Bears say, ‘Hey, you know what, this isn’t personal, Fox. None of your people are welcome here.’ ‘Well, what do you mean this is just a Tom Brady issue?'” Florio said via Pro Football Talk.
“No, they all work with him! Anything they hear or see, they can say to him, as they’re preparing to present the best possible game. He’s gonna pick stuff up.”
From Florio’s perspective, this is on the NFL. And the more he thinks about it, the more it pisses him off. The veteran journalist’s co-host, former NFL QB Chris Simms, was a little cooler in his demeanor. Nonetheless, he did agree with Florio, characterizing the situation as “crazy” and “hypocritical.”
“It doesn’t seem NFL-like. It doesn’t. And I love the first one… like, no sh*t an owner can go in there and put the headset on. He owns the f*cking team,” Simms said.
“What are we talking about here? It’s like, ‘Hey, is the sun hot? The sun is hot? The sun is hot?’ ‘Hey the moon actually is not that hot.’ That’s like what that statement was there. We wanna know about the sun, the moon though, on the other hand. What was the point of that statement altogether?
Simms hits the nail on the head here. The NFL’s statement didn’t answer any questions the public and the media (and more likely than not, the other 31 teams as well) had on the situation. Instead, they repeated obvious truths that we all knew already.
At some point, the league will need to make a more concrete statement on this because it is truly unprecedented. If we were an owner of one of the other 31 teams, we would be on the horn with Roger Goodell about this posthaste.
