Dan Patrick Questions if NFL is Letting Tom Brady Abuse Power as Raiders Owner

It didn’t sit right with many when Fox agreed to pay Tom Brady $325 million to be its new lead broadcaster while he was also in negotiations to become a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders.

Some questioned Brady’s ability to be unbiased during his broadcasts, while others believed there to be a blatant conflict of interest that would be a dealbreaker for anyone else not named Tom Brady.

It seems renown sportscaster Dan Patrick is among them. During Wednesday’s episode of the “Dan Patrick Show,” Patrick laid out an argument that the NFL is creating a problematic environment by opening the door to allow Brady to abuse his power as a minority owner to leverage his position as a top broadcaster with millions of eyeballs on him every week.

“I wonder they fired the entire offensive staff with the Raiders loss, Tom Brady's doing the game, isn’t he? Did Tom know what was going on as a minority owner?” Patrick asked. “I don't know if he's doing double duties where he's doing the game but he's also being informed ‘By the way, we're going to release the entire offensive staff here.’ It's problematic with Tom trying to do both of these things.

“…He's not allowed to go into [team] meetings. Now, can he get that information? Yes, but if you said Tom Brady got to go in the locker room and say to Patrick Mahomes, ‘I'm curious about this,’ chances are Mahomes is going to tell Tom that, but he's not allowed to exchange information or get information because he works for the Raiders — crazy, problematic.”

As part of the contract Brady signed once his NFL ownership was approved, the seven-time Super Bowl winner isn’t allowed to enter a team’s facility, attend broadcast production meetings, gamble in accordance to the NFL’s gambling policy, be critical of officials or engage with players in any capacity other than socially so as not to violate the NFL’s anti-tampering policy.

But as Patrick points out, that last one is likely the hardest to enforce and is arguably the slipperiest slope.

“They’ve got Tom Brady rules, and that’s unfortunate here,” Patrick added. “They allowed him to be a minority owner and he’s also a lead broadcaster for Fox — no.”