Tom Brady is playing coy. He has been for a while.
During Super Bowl LVIII, working as a Fox analyst, Brady said his role as a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders “is just much more of a long-term, kind of behind-the-scenes-type role.” Quoted on the team website four months later, Brady continued to downplay his position and gave a reminder that owner Mark Davis, general manager John Spytek and coach Pete Carroll remain the primary day-to-day decision-makers.
“Well, I’m just a limited partner, so Mark’s the boss,” Brady said. “And then Pete does his job and Spy 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.”
As much as Brady is working to frame his Raiders capacity as a passive one, the truth is his fingerprints are all over the franchise, according to team and league sources. Since the NFL approved his acquisition of a 5 percent stake in the team last October, his impact has been felt every step of the way.
When the 2024 season was over, Brady helped Davis make the decisions to fire coach Antonio Pierce and general manager Tom Telesco. From there, he contacted coach and GM candidates directly and was on the hiring panel for each position. The result: Carroll and Spytek.
“He’s been integrally involved,” Carroll said at their introductory news conference in January. “This is his opportunity to put his stamp on a franchise, and so we’re excited to represent that. … Mark has done an incredible job to figure out how to formulate this plan so that we can all fit together.”
Carroll went on to say working with Brady was a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.” Along with new minority owners Tom Wagner, Egon Durban and Michael Meldman, Brady has pushed for a greater investment in football operations. Brady was involved in several meetings with the coaching staff and front office to lay out the plan at quarterback this offseason, which led to the acquisition of Geno Smith. Brady’s attendance at meetings, practices, scrimmages and preseason games since hasn’t exactly been for fun.
“He’s a very curious person,” Spytek said in February. “I’d be some kind of idiot if I didn’t listen to what he thought about things.”
Nothing about Brady’s stature with the Raiders is minor — and it was never meant to be.
“I want Tom to have a huge voice, no question about it,” Davis said in December. “It’s part of building the infrastructure of the organization … a football person on that side of it that’s not a coach or a general manager. He’s somebody who can oversee the whole picture. I believe Tom, come time, will be the person who can do that.”
Davis brought Brady on board last year to help create a new era of Raiders football. When the Raiders kick off their 2025 season Sunday against Brady’s old team, the New England Patriots, we’ll get our first indication of whether it will be a better one.
The business relationship between Tom Brady and Mark Davis (right) began with Davis selling an ownership stake in the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces. (Ethan Miller / Getty Images)
Davis sold 25.5 percent of the Raiders and delegated a significant amount of power within the organization last year. Part of the motivation: humility.
Since he became the controlling owner in 2011, the results on the field have been, overwhelmingly, underwhelming. During that span, the Raiders have made the playoffs just twice, they have zero postseason wins, and they’ve cycled through five GMs and seven head coaches.
Given those results, Davis looked within. After reflecting, he recognized the Raiders’ front office lacked the football knowledge needed to be successful.
“The one thing I know is what I don’t know, and I’m going to surround myself with people who do know those things. And I’m going to give them the opportunity to do their job,” Davis said in January. “I give them a vision and goals, and we talk about those things, but results are what speak.”
Why Brady? It’s a courtship that dates to more than half a decade. When Brady became a free agent in 2019, Davis wanted to sign him. Instead, then-coach Jon Gruden elected to stick with Derek Carr. Brady went on to join the Tampa Bay Bucs and immediately won a Super Bowl.
“He was supposed to be here in 2020,” Davis said of Brady on an in-house team podcast, “Raiders: Talk of the Nation,” earlier this week. “That’s where our relationship started.”
Davis stayed in touch with Brady’s agent, Don Yee, and expressed that he’d still like for Brady the quarterback to be part of the organization at some point. That almost happened again in 2023, but Brady decided to retire instead.
Ultimately, Brady and Davis would connect through business. Later that year, Davis sold Brady a minority ownership stake in the WNBA’s Las Vegas Aces. Then, in 2024, Davis agreed to sell Brady a piece of the Raiders. In his mind, Brady would give the Raiders what he felt they were missing.
“I’ve been around some great, great football people in my lifetime. You talk about my father (Al Davis). You talk about John Madden. You talk about Tom Flores. You talk about Ron Wolf,” Davis said. “All of these people have helped me along the way. So, I know what it takes. I think we’ve got the infrastructure now in this organization to move into the future.”
Carroll spent the 2024 season out of coaching, but he always knew he wanted to get back. As he weighed potential opportunities for him to make that happen in 2025, he realized Brady’s presence changed the way he viewed the Raiders.
“The entire image of this opportunity shifted,” Carroll said in March. “The expertise that he brings, the uniqueness. I didn’t know how he would be to work with. I just competed against him and listened to him over the years, had great admiration and respect and all that. But he is really grounded in his mentality, and that’s what makes him so valuable to us.”
Brady was college teammates with Spytek at Michigan. Spytek was also an executive with the Bucs during Brady’s years there, so they already knew how to work with one another. At least thus far, issues haven’t emerged among the triumvirate of Carroll, Spytek and Brady when it comes to power dynamics.
Although Brady isn’t based in Las Vegas, he communicates with Spytek, Carroll and wellness coordinator Alex Guerrero daily, and he’s made several trips to be on-site when warranted. Carroll and Spytek have welcomed that.
“He’s keeping track of everything,” Carroll said. “We talk regularly. He’s really close with John, and they have a great relationship. … We can add the richness that he offers.”
Tom Brady was instrumental in bringing both Pete Carroll and Geno Smith to the Raiders. (Mark J. Rebilas / Imagn Images)
Brady’s interactions with players haven’t been as frequent, but he gave a speech to the roster during training camp. And earlier in the offseason, he also hosted Smith at his home in Florida. They spent about an hour talking about football, life and mentality.
“It’s Tom Brady. It’s a guy that I’ve idolized and looked up to, and I believe that he does things the right way,” Smith said in April. “You understand why he is who he is immediately. He takes everything extremely serious. He’s a diligent worker, and he believes in hard work. And I think we align in that way, and I want to be a sponge.”
When the Raiders take the field against the Patriots in Foxboro, Mass., Brady won’t be there. He’ll be in Landover, Md., calling the matchup between the Washington Commanders and New York Giants for Fox.
With the regular season underway, Brady now shifts his focus to his duties as a broadcaster. There’s no choice but to trust Carroll, Spytek and everyone else on the ground.
“We’re trying to do a good job of really keeping him connected so he really can be at the edge of giving the advice and helping us make decisions in a way that’s representative of ownership,” Carroll said.
Brady’s contract with Fox runs through 2033. However long his career in broadcasting lasts, he intends for his position with the Raiders to go on longer. In a statement released in the fall, Brady said he plans to maintain his ownership stake “for the rest of my life.”
(Top photo: Brian Fluharty / Imagn Images)