Las Vegas Raiders minority owner Tom Brady generated headlines when he recently said that “it’s everybody’s fault” that the 2025 Raiders “underperformed in every area” en route to finishing the season with a record of 3-14.
“And it starts with me,” Brady continued, “and it filters down to the rest of the players on the field, and they’ve got to go out there, and ultimately they’ve got to perform at a high level.”
During Monday’s edition of the “Pro Football Talk Live” program, NFL insider Mike Florio shared quite a strong response to Brady.
Is the relationship with the Raiders simply a hobby for Tom Brady?
“The comment, ‘It starts with me,’ I didn’t know he was now the majority owner,” Florio said about Brady, per Eduardo Razo of Heavy. “It starts with (Raiders principal owner) Mark Davis. Unless Tom just realizes it really doesn’t start with Mark Davis because he really isn’t in a position to know what he’s doing. But if it does start with Tom…what are you doing working for Fox? … It really doesn’t start with you. It’s hard for him to say it starts with me when he’s viewing this as a hobby, something he just kind of barnstorms into from time to time to deal with.”
Of course, Florio was referencing how Brady is serving as the alleged “de facto boss when it comes to football matters” for the Raiders while he is also Fox’s lead NFL analyst during the season. Additionally, Brady has also made it known that he is a mentor for rookie quarterback and No. 1 overall draft pick Fernando Mendoza.
Tom Brady is “is trying to do a little too much” during his post-playing days
Brady and Fox agreed to a 10-year deal reportedly worth $375M in 2022, long before anybody knew he would become a minority owner of a franchise while working for one of the league’s media partners. For what it’s worth, a story from this past January revealed that a majority of players around the league don’t feel that Brady should “pick a lane” and choose either calling games for Fox or running the Raiders’ football operations.
It’s unclear how Mendoza and other Raiders players feel about Brady not fully concentrating on the team from September through January or February of any given year.
“Tom is trying to do a little too much,” Florio continued. “I don’t know where this is coming from or what you’re trying to prove. You’ve won me over. You don’t need to do 20 different things. I don’t know if this is a race with Peyton Manning to acquire enough money to become the majority owner of a team. I don’t know. But you don’t have to do all this stuff. Do one or two things really well. As for the two things you do on Sundays, owning the Raiders and working for Fox, you have to pick one or the other. You just have to. Until you do, you’re not going to be the best you possibly can be at either one.”
There continues to be no indication Brady wants to give up his Fox duties to go all-in on running the Raiders. Perhaps that will change if Las Vegas endures another woeful campaign later this year.