Future NFL Hall of Famer and Las Vegas Raiders minority owner Tom Brady has been the center of controversy lately.
Brady was spotted in the coaches booth during the broadcast of the Week 2 contest between the Raiders and Los Angeles Chargers, and upon seeing that shot, ESPN's announcers revealed that Brady stays in regular contact with Raiders offensive coordinator Chip Kelly and the two discuss film and game plan every week.
That immediately led to conflict of interest concerns, with many noting that Brady could impart what he learns while preparing for games he's covering as a FOX announcer to his own team.
Brady has finally addressed those concerns in his "Do Your Job" newsletter and called anyone who thinks he's taking advantage of his role as an announcer "paranoid and distrustful."
"I love football. At its core it is a game of principles. And with all the success it has given me, I feel I have a moral and ethical duty to the sport; which is why the point where my roles in it intersect is not actually a point of conflict, despite what the paranoid and distrustful might believe," Brady said.
"Rather, it's the place from which my ethical duty emerges: to grow, evolve, and improve the game that has given me everything," he added.
As far as the Raiders are concerned, both Kelly and head coach Pete Carroll shot down the idea that Brady is as involved as the ESPN announcers said he is.
"I've spent a lot of time just talking football with [Brady], but it's not on a — we don't talk about game plans," Kelly said before Week 3. "We spent a lot of time over the summer, a couple Zooms... and we would just talk ball, you know, ‘What did you like against this?’ So really, when I use Tom, and I just use him as a resource of, ‘Hey, you know, when you faced a Mike Zimmer-type defense, what did you like protection-wise and play-wise?’
"But on a weekly basis, he's not game planning with us or talking to us."
“I think Tom’s really tried to honor that really strictly and with all respect to the situation of concerns like you’re talking about,” Carroll said to reporters. “And I think he’s been really good. He has not been — he is not planning games with us. He is not talking to us about anything other than our conversations that we have that are really . . . random. They’re not set up, they’re not structured in any way. And he knows. He’s very respectful of what he does otherwise, and he’s of the opinion that, you know, he doesn’t want to be that kind of a factor, and so he’s not.”
Following his appearance in the coaches box, the NFL said Brady wasn't doing anything wrong and is allowed to be there.
So far, there has been zero evidence that Brady is actually giving his team inside information, although it wouldn't surprise us one bit if he was, as Brady has never shied away from trying to gain an advantage.
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