{"id":756838,"date":"2026-07-11T14:31:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-11T14:31:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/756838\/"},"modified":"2026-07-11T14:31:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-11T14:31:08","slug":"report-mike-macdonald-wasnt-referring-to-tom-brady-as-the-person-who-provided-super-bowl-help","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/756838\/","title":{"rendered":"Report: Mike Macdonald wasn’t referring to Tom Brady as the person who provided Super Bowl help"},"content":{"rendered":"

Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald made a bit of a stir on Thursday, when he told Dan Patrick that the Seahawks got help from someone with a \u201cconflict of interest<\/a>\u201d when preparing to face the Patriots in Super Bowl LX.<\/p>\n

The use of the phrase \u201cconflict of interest\u201d prompted many to conclude that the person in question was the man as to whom that phrase has been used repeatedly in recent months, given his partial ownership of the Raiders and his role as an analyst covering the rest of the league (and having unique access to many other teams) for Fox. Radio host Zach Gelb reports that Macdonald says it wasn\u2019t Tom Brady, who had already angered plenty of Patriots fans before the game by saying he didn\u2019t have a \u201cdog in fight.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI reached out to Mike Macdonald to get clarification on his comments,\u201d Gelb tweeted. \u201cI asked if [Brady] was the person with the \u2018conflict of interest\u2019 that gave input to the Seahawks before the Super Bowl. Mike told me it wasn\u2019t Brady<\/a> that he was talking about in the interview.\u201d<\/p>\n

That may not change the minds of pissed-off Pats fans. Many will assume Macdonald is simply putting the toothpaste back in the tube. (We\u2019ve got no reason to think Macdonald isn\u2019t telling the truth, but nowadays truth is irrelevant to what people choose to believe.)<\/p>\n

Although Brady last played for the Patriots in 2019, the team still uses the system he knows better than any \u2014 the Josh McDaniels offense. And Brady, who was poised to hire Seahawks offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak to coach the Raiders, presumably preferred having the new coach bring the cachet of a Super Bowl win to a franchise that hasn\u2019t been to one in 24 years, and that has had only two one-and-down playoff appearances since then.<\/p>\n

If it wasn\u2019t Brady, who was it? It would have been someone who would have been able to help either with the McDaniels offense or Patriots coach Mike Vrabel\u2019s defense, with enough of a connection to get Macdonald to call it a \u201cconflict of interest.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whoever it was, there can\u2019t be many who would get that label. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald made a bit of a stir on Thursday, when he told Dan Patrick that…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":756839,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[349,99],"class_list":["post-756838","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-nfl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756838","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=756838"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/756838\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/756839"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=756838"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=756838"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=756838"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}