Tom Brady’s ‘I’m there as a great sounding board’ line on Raiders raises questions

There have been a lot of media discussions around NFL on Fox analyst Tom Brady’s minority ownership role with the Las Vegas Raiders. Conversations around the potential conflict of interest there began even before Brady called his first game for Fox last fall. They intensified amidst discussions of NFL restrictions on Brady as a broadcaster given his ownership role and after his ownership stake became official last October. But a key question in all this is what Brady’s Raiders’ role actually is.

While they’re far from the last word on the subject, Brady himself recently offered some notable comments on this front. Those came in an article from Paul Gutierrez, currently a senior columnist for the team’s Raiders.com website (and previously with NBC Sports Bay Area and The Sacramento Bee). Gutierrez wrote that he asked Brady about this around Brady’s appearance to launch a Hall of Excellence sports museum at the Fontainebleau Las Vegas, and that Brady offered some details on his role:

I asked Brady how, exactly, he would describe his role in the day-to-day operations with the Raiders.

He did not flinch.

“Well, I’m just a limited partner, so Mark [owner Mark Davis] is the boss,” Brady told me. “And then Pete [head coach Pete Carroll] does his job and Spy [GM John Spytek] does his job and, I think, we trust them to make the right decisions.

“I’m there as a great sounding board for anything they want to do.”

…Brady did not get into specifics on what his daily role looks like but was more than happy to describe how his first offseason with the Raiders looked and felt like to him.

“I’ve loved it,” he said. “And, again, just trying to contribute in the ways that I can to help the team be the best they can be, on and off the field. We’ve got a great group of people. I love Mark. He’s done an incredible job getting the team to Vegas, getting the stadium built.”

Those answers certainly don’t indicate if Brady is or isn’t heavily involved day-to-day. “A great sounding board” might mean Carroll and Spytek reach out to Brady multiple times per day on specific plays, formations, or personnel moves, or it might mean they only check in with him occasionally.

Along those lines, the league’s current restrictions (themselves under some debate) on Brady make some sense. While keeping him out of particular meetings may hurt his development as a broadcaster (although Fox figures, and some other media figures, beg to differ), it’s hard to argue he should be included in those meetings if he’s not even willing to tell someone writing for his own team’s website that he isn’t involved with day-to-day Raiders’ decisions.

If Brady really isn’t regularly talking to the team’s leadership, there’s an argument to be made that he should just say that. And that could lead to a revision of restrictions on him as a broadcaster. But, if he wants to keep it open just how much he is or isn’t involved with the team, that’s his prerogative.

However, it is interesting that Brady is continuing to not spell this out. And that certainly won’t diminish the conflict of interest questions. And it’s also notable that this comes around recent other comments from him on how he sees his broadcasting role as “elevating the sport” rather than diving into specific critiques of players or coaches. We’ll see where the discussion of him as a broadcaster goes from here, but it’s significant that when given a prime opportunity to clarify how involved he is or isn’t with the Raiders, he punted.