Seven-time Super Bowl champion quarterback Tom Brady will continue his first season in the broadcast booth on Sunday when he calls the NFC Divisional Playoff game between the Detroit Lions and Washington Commanders. Brady has been operating under limitations this season since putting forth a pending bid to become a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, which was eventually approved by NFL owners last October. Brady is unable to attend production meetings in person or online, cannot access team facilities and also is prohibited from divulging public criticism of league officials and other organizations. Yet Dan Patrick and his colleagues discussed a potential conflict of interest forthcoming when he is on the call Sunday afternoon.
The Raiders fired head coach Antonio Pierce last week following his first full season in the position, creating a vacancy that the team is looking to fill. Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson is reportedly considered a lead candidate for the job and is said to be “seriously considering” the position, according to Vic Tafur of The Athletic. Patrick articulated a possibility of people reading into some of what Brady says on the air, perhaps looking for clues surrounding the direction of the Raiders’ head coaching search or other plans.
“What happens if they show Ben Johnson on the sideline?,” Patrick asked on Wednesday’s edition of the Dan Patrick Show. “Is Tom Brady, minority owner of the Raiders, allowed to talk about Ben Johnson? Does he have any inside info, which I would believe he would. I like how the NFL makes it seem like, ‘This isn’t a conflict of interest.’”
Offering an analogy to compare the situation, Patrick reiterated what director of operations Paul “Seton” O’Connor said Wednesday morning. O’Connor hypothesized Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones serving as an analyst for a game while looking for a head coach and wondered if that would be a conflict of interest there. Brady is slated to call Super Bowl LIX with FOX Sports next month, marking the conclusion of his first year as the lead analyst on these broadcasts.
“The NFL is bending over backwards to help Tom, it feels like, or looking the other way,” Patrick said. “‘Conflict of interest? Oh, it is what it is,’ and then you go back in the wayback machine to how they went after Tom. They were going after him in a big-time, big way; like they were investigating him then. This, it’s like, ‘Oh, he’s with FOX, he’s going to be calling the Super Bowl. Let’s play nice. Probably his last year as a broadcaster – no conflict of interest here.’”
O’Connor emphasized that this is a “blatant conflict of interest,” and it made him wonder what other situations the league could potentially be choosing to neglect. Patrick then thought that if the game was a blowout and the broadcast was looking to fill time, Brady could potentially discuss Johnson in the greater context of NFL news and rumors. The show also mentioned possibilities of Brady pretending he is not interested, questioning Johnson’s style of calling plays or accidentally letting information slip about the Raiders.
“How many times do you listen to a game where you’re going to be reading into maybe an ulterior motive?,” Patrick said. “Troy Aikman came out after the last game that he and Joe [Buck] did and said something about the Cowboys’ job not being a good job or desirable, but Troy is not part of the Cowboys, or he’s not part of another organization ripping the Cowboys. Tom, he’s got his fingerprints all over this. He’s going to making these changes, he’s making these decisions, but he’s also going to be broadcasting a game where maybe the No. 1 candidate for the head coaching vacancies is going to be coaching.”
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