Are NFL teams really concerned about Tom Brady’s potential conflict of interest?

Yahoo Sports host Andrew Siciliano and senior NFL reporter Jori Epstein discuss the Las Vegas minority owner and FOX commentator’s appearance in the Raiders coaching booth during Monday Night Football. Hear the full conversation on “Inside Coverage” – and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you listen.

Video Transcript

It is amazing how the jury is split right down the middle from the people that I talked to.

There are people who think this is the biggest scandal of all time.

And it’s the massive conflict of interest, and why would anybody talk to Tom Brady?

And that there are people, and I’m talking coaches as well, people in the league and senior positions who just go, like, who cares?

So don’t tell them anything.

Like, what’s actually the big deal?

I know you’re writing about this this week, what are you hearing?

Yeah, I’m hearing a lot and, as you mentioned, this is the type of thing that there’s not one united, resounding opinion.

So I wanted to ask a lot of people because I didn’t want to just ask a source or two and be like, this is what the league thinks.

I heard back from 9 different sources between coaches and executives in the NFC, the AFC, I think they were from 8 different teams, and of them, I ended up sorting them into 3 categories.

I would say that, uh, let’s say 2 of them believe that there’s no concern with Tom Brady, both being a limited team owner for the Raiders in the capacities that we saw him in Monday night and also being a national broadcaster, meeting virtually with teams and production meetings.

Two of them thought, OK, there’s not really a concern, but the optics look bad when he’s on the headset for one team and he’s going to be asking our team or another team, which, by the way, I did go through and check 6 teams on the Raiders schedule, and that’s 7 games if you count the Chiefs twice, are on the Raiders schedule.

So when Tom Brady was at this game, he was getting ready for the Bears-Cowboys game this week.

Well, who did the Raiders play the next week?

The Bears.

Who do they play later in the season?

The Cowboys.

This past week, Chiefs-Eagles, one day before he’s in the coach’s booth.

He is broadcasting that game.

He had production meetings virtually with those teams.

Well, he’s going to play both of them later this season.

Anyway, back to it.

So I had two people who believed that this was not a concern.

Two people who believed that this was a perception concern.

It was bad optics, but not actually going to impact the competitive edge.

And then 5 of the 9, so the overwhelming majority, did believe there was a real competitive concern, and they were actually split on what the issue was.

Some of them said he’s on the dang headset.

They didn’t quite say it that way.

And you think that we’re supposed to pretend he’s not that involved in the Raiders.

Others felt that they weren’t actually that concerned about Brady being in the coach’s booth or having access to the headset because how much can you really make those adjustments in the middle of the game when you’re there?

But Peter Schrager’s report that he’s meeting with Chip Kelly 2 to 3 times a week, going over film, going over game plans, that’s actually what concerns some people I talked to more, because that’s when you would have the time to input those wrinkles.

And as everyone said, Brady’s a really competitive guy.

Why would he not use this to his advantage to help the Raiders when you look at the course of his career and what he was doing to get an advantage?

Do we think the rules are fair?

Do we think that this, as you said, it seems as if the league is valuing Brady’s participation more than it is the overall appearance of integrity.

To me, I think there are two things that will tell you whether or not these are fair.

The first is that when the league put out its statement, it didn’t say any national broadcaster can sit in a coach’s booth.

It said any team owner can sit in a coach’s booth.

No one was debating whether the owner should be in the coach’s booth.

They were debating whether the guy in national broadcast meetings with other teams should be in the coach’s booth.

So I think that the league trying to shift attention away from that to me shows me how they feel about whether that part is OK.

The other thing I is when you look at what Pete Carroll said, because as I mentioned, there are people in the league who don’t really care if Brady’s on the headset, but they do care if Brady is meeting with Chip Kelly 2 to 3 times a week after having met with their own team in production.

Well, when Pete Carroll was asked about that, he said, and I’m going to read this verbatim.

Yeah, that’s not accurate.

That’s not accurate.

We have conversations and he went into the conversations.

Anyone who has to tell you 3 times that something’s not accurate, you should question whether or not it’s accurate.

Are NFL teams really concerned about Tom Brady’s potential conflict of interest?

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