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Tom Brady’s conflict of interest between his job at Fox and his partial ownership of the Raiders was in the spotlight Saturday night, given his team’s interest in Lions coordinators Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn. Fox had an absolute obligation to disclose the situation to the audience at the start of the game.
It kind of happened during the game, with Kevin Burkhardt’s question and Brady’s non-committal response, but it doesn’t say anything.
Via Dan Shanoff of TheAthletic.com, here is the exchange:
Burkhardt: “You know, Tom, you picked yourself up from the side a few months ago. You know, buying a minority stake in the Raiders. So, you know, just normal stuff. That said, the cool thing is that you get to be at these interviews and this head coaching search. And, obviously, we told you that Glenn and Ben Johnson did. How did you rate them?”
(A quick note: Calling the $220 million investment a “lateral flip” is an odd choice of words.)
Brady: “It’s just been a great learning experience. What you realize is that the league is full of great potential. What I believe in — resumes, accolades are earned by what people do on the field. You earn your opportunities and you do your performance and let it do the talking. Just like I did when I was a player.”
In addition, according to Shanoff, Brady he never mentioned Johnson’s name.
After a disastrous fly-too-close-to-the-sun-on-pastrami-wings ploy that resulted in a field goal by catcher Jameson Williams, Brady didn’t initially respond to Burkhardt’s characterization of Johnson’s play call as a “disaster.”
Later, Brady had this to say about that fateful play: “I tried to run something a little tricky. . . and at this point, Williams is trying to make a decision, a quarterback who isn’t a quarterback, is trying to throw the ball and read the defense and . . . not a great time for a trick.”
Brady, who is prohibited from being “extremely critical” (whatever that means) game official, remained silent when rules analyst Mike Pereira said a flag should have been thrown on the block after the interception that sent quarterback Jared Goff first to the ground and then into the blue tent.
The good news for Brady is that he didn’t interview any of the coordinators in the NFC championship game. And if Saturday night’s game put Commanders offensive coordinator Kliff Kingbury (a former teammate of Brady’s in New England) on the Raiders’ radar screen, the Raiders would be wise to shoot it for the rest of the game. Otherwise, we probably won’t even hear Kingsbury’s name next week.
Meanwhile, as TheAthletic.com’s Andrew Marchand noted, Fox Sports president of programming and production Brad Zager called him “funny” for anyone to ask Brady about the real (not perceived) conflicts of interest created by his dual roles. Which apparently means Fox thinks it’s also “ridiculous” for the NFL to prevent Brady from attending practices or production meetings, or from setting foot in the team’s 31 facilities other than the one it partially owns.
It’s far from funny. It is a very real conflict of interest. Others may downplay it for whatever reason they choose, but it is real. And there’s at least one other network I’m somewhat familiar with that would tell Brady to choose a path between analyzing every team’s games and owning one of them.
