Tom Brady's Raiders ownership is a loss for football fans

bBefore his first game as a television color commentator for CBS in 1979, the late John Madden – widely considered the best NFL analyst of all time – was told by his producers that broadcast crews typically monitored the practices of the teams they were covering not observed next Sunday. Each team's PR representative met with the broadcast team to share insights and storylines.

“No,” Madden said. “I’ll talk to the coaches.”

Within six months of Madden's announcement, talking to coaches and players – and observing workouts – became standard procedure for broadcast preparation across the NFL. And this tradition continues to this day.

This season, however, a highly visible analyst who happens to be the lead color commentator for Fox Sports, the broadcaster of that season's Super Bowl, will not be able to participate in this valuable pregame coverage process. He is also the greatest football player of all time.

Because of his status as minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, which was approved by the league on Tuesday, Tom Brady, who earns $375 million from Fox for a broadcasting job, will face restrictions that mean he cannot prepare for his role with the same vigor and rigor that Madden, the standard-bearer of this business, could.

This is a loss for football fans. Because if Brady could apply his work ethic to his role as a Fox broadcaster as much as he did as a player, he could be great.

We as viewers deserve Tom Brady in full.

Brady, who has received mixed performance reviews on his broadcasts so far, now has a significant financial interest in the Raiders thanks to his 5% stake, and the team's most recent valuation by Forbes was $6.7 billion. To avoid potential conflicts of interest in this unknown dual role as lead analyst/owner and the possibility that he may share trade secrets, Brady cannot participate in production meetings with players and coaches in person or virtually and cannot have access to team facilities. As an NFL owner, he is prohibited by league bylaws from publicly criticizing game officials and other clubs.

He has been working under these conditions since the beginning of the season: Brady and Raiders owner Mark Davis agreed to the terms of the contract in March 2023, but approval of the transaction was delayed in part to resolve these conflicts.

“I am committed to contributing to the organization in any way I can,” Brady wrote in a letter posted on social media Tuesday after his ownership stake became official. “We honor the Raiders' rich tradition while finding every opportunity possible to improve our offering to fans… and most importantly, WIN football games.” #JustWinBaby. #LFG.”

However, for a TV analyst, the information he receives from conversations with players and coaches, as well as from observing training, is very important. “It's almost a kind of passion,” says Randy Cross, the three-time Super Bowl winner with the San Francisco 49ers, who anchored NFL games as a color commentator for two decades beginning in 1989 and currently anchors college games for CBS.

Cross, who also called the New England Patriots' preseason games for years, remembers informative meetings with Bill Belichick: The notoriously secretive Pats coach didn't reveal much about his players, but he loved to talk football history, and those conversations helped with that “To put Cross' calls into context.” “Every week there are perspectives and stories from players and coaches and personal things from them that you use in a broadcast,” Cross says. “Every week.”

“These meetings are the most useful thing we do all week to prepare for the game,” said Don Criqui, the former longtime NFL play-by-play announcer for CBS and NBC. “We have access to information that the public doesn’t have.”

As announcers build trust and relationships, coaches may open up their game plans. For example, occasionally they write the first few plays for the announcers or alert them to an unknown injury. Brady won't attend meetings to gain such insights, and given his involvement with another team, players and coaches may be less receptive to Fox's broadcast team, knowing they will likely pass information to Brady.

“Tom just wouldn't be as knowledgeable as he could be if he wasn't an owner,” said an NFL broadcast executive who requested anonymity to speak candidly about the company. “Plain and simple.”

Brady's inability to criticize officials and teams is also a disservice to fans. “The reality of this business is that there are a lot of organizations that should be talked about,” Cross says. Self-censorship is the enemy of insight. In the NFC Championship game after the 2018 season, for example, the referees missed an obvious pass interference call late in regulation against the Los Angeles Rams that could have given the New Orleans Saints a trip to the Super Bowl. The Rams won 26-23 in overtime. Troy Aikman, then senior color analyst at Fox, was freaked out on the call. “That should have been a penalty,” Aikman said. “It couldn’t be more obvious.”

Could Brady have been as offensive as Aikman? Would he have thrown caution to the wind, risked a fine and screwed the referees? Sure, Kevin Burkhardt, the Fox play-by-play announcer who works with Brady, could have objected to the call. But fans want to hear the seven-time Super Bowl champion's opinion. Fox pays him huge sums to deliver it.

(Fox Sports declined to comment and declined to provide Brady to TIME. Brady's publicist did not respond to an interview request.)

Last Monday night on Monday Night Football, fans saw Belichick criticize the New York Jets for firing coach Robert Saleh five games into the season. He also took shots at team owner Woody Johnson. “I’m not a big Jets fan, in case you don’t know,” he told Peyton and Eli Manning during their “ManningCast.” “It’s kind of like that with the Jets. They have barely gained over 30% in the last 10 years. The owner is the owner – ready, fire, aim.”

Belichick's attitude was fantastic on television. Could Brady offer something similar? Or will he, by fiat, be the anodyne analyst?

“It's hard to say you're serving the viewer when your big-game analyst isn't able to contribute much,” the broadcast executive says.

That's not to say Brady can't get around these limitations and prove to be a serviceable, if not excellent, commentator. Burkhardt and the Fox broadcast team can certainly pass their notes on to Brady. He can devour movies and scour the phones for tidbits: insiders will likely take Brady's call. And as a game unfolds, Brady's real-time expertise could prove invaluable.

“He's been really, really good, he's getting better every week, you can tell he's working his ass off,” said Al Michaels, in his 40th season as a prime-time NFL announcer. “He has an innate feel for the rhythm of the game. He has the brains of a coach in his head.”

No doubt. But with these “Brady Rules” Brady, the broadcaster, doesn’t work 100%. At the Super Bowl in New Orleans in February, for example, he'll likely miss the game-week workouts that give analysts a keen sense of game plans and which teams they're trying to stop. The over 120 million viewers deserve better.

Brady should pick a job – owner or broadcaster – and take it.