As October looms and the 2025 NFL season winds on, one storyline continues to dominate the media landscape.
Tom Brady’s continued efforts to balance being a broadcaster with FOX Sports, and a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders.
Questions regarding a potential conflict of interest have followed Brady into his second season in the booth, and kicked into high gear following the Raiders’ Week 2 game. During that loss to the Los Angeles Chargers, Brady was spotted in the coaching booth, wearing a headset, a moment that only raised more questions about his dual roles.
Looking to address those conflict-of-interest questions, Brady took to his personal newsletter on Wednesday. In a post titled “Do Your Job,” Brady wrote at length about his NFL career, his current roles, and more.
He also addressed the issues that have hung over the start to the 2025 NFL season.
Writing in pertinent part, Brady addressed those who, he would go on to say, are “are telling on themselves.”
As a broadcaster, I want everyone who tunes into FOX on Sunday afternoons to feel like they got their money’s worth for the three hours they entrust to our entire team. Those are precious hours for busy, hardworking people. We owe them a return on that investment, which is to do our jobs to the best of our abilities. For me, it’s to entertain and inform and to help create a great viewing experience by drawing on the deep well of knowledge and wisdom I have gained from playing high level football for nearly thirty years.
As a limited partner in the Raiders, I want the Silver & Black to return to the glory of those amazing years under Al Davis and John Madden. I want the team to have talented players who have we-first attitudes, who are coachable, who have the right values and do things the right way and know how to do their jobs in pursuit of team success. I have a deep desire to help refresh and reinvigorate the culture of a franchise with cherished traditions and a long, storied history in professional football.
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. Rather, it’s the place from which my ethical duty emerges: to grow, evolve, and improve the game that has given me everything.
I love talking football with anybody. Fans, friends, players, coaches. I love being able to utilize everything I’ve learned to help others achieve their potential in the sport–young players, young coaches, even vets going through new experiences or facing tough decisions. Like I talked about last week, that was a big part of what motivated me to play so hard for 23 years, and why I’ve always been very open to helping anyone with questions about how to improve or to be the best they can be. I want them to have a chance to experience the kind of success I had. I want that for all the guys we bring into the Raiders organization and I want it for all the guys playing their guts out in each game I broadcast. I want everyone to play well, to do their best, to do their job, and ultimately to succeed. Football as a sport and the NFL as a business depend on it.
Let’s unpack this a bit.
Brady’s idea of growing the game for future generations and giving back to a sport that has given him so much is very much a noble quest. After all, Brady himself followed a football journey that took him from sixth-round afterthought to seven-time Super Bowl champion. As has been covered countless times, the weekend of the 1999 NFL Draft, Brady thought he would be pursuing a different vocation, as his name continued to tumble down the draft board.
He ended up in New England, mired on the depth chart behind a former first-overall selection in Drew Bledsoe. An injury to Bledsoe during the 2001-2002 season opened the door for Brady to take over as the starting quarterback, and he was a true Cinderella story as he led the upstart Patriots to a win in Super Bowl XXXVI.
That began a journey that put Brady on a path to where he is today, as one of the game’s greatest quarterbacks, a sure-fire first-ballot Hall of Fame selection, a member of the lead FOX Sports broadcast team, and a minority owner of an NFL franchise.
Given all of that, it tracks that Brady would want to give back to a sport that has given him so much, whatever form that “giving back” takes. In his mind, he believes that passing on the knowledge of the game he loves, and cultivated over decades under center, will inspire future generations to continue playing the sport that has been his life’s calling.
That, frankly, is a worthwhile pursuit.
Where Brady’s argument starts to falter, however, is when he ties it to his position with the Raiders. These are not just players whom he would like to see succeed. These are players on a team where he is a minority owner, whose success he has a financial stake in cultivating.
And let’s not forget, speaking of cultivating, the persona that Brady crafted over his years in the league. As the ultimate winner, a quarterback driven to success by a near-paranoid fear of losing, someone who believed every single day he had to go out and prove to anyone who would listen that even after all the years of success, he still was the best option for the Patriots at quarterback.
For Brady the player, winning — or perhaps more accurately, not losing — was everything.
Brady may truly believe that everything he is doing right now comes without a conflict of interest. He may truly want every player in the NFL, as well as every player on the Raiders, to be the absolute best version of themselves.
That may even include the 53 players the Raiders are facing each and every week.
But the bigger issue here is not just what Brady is asking us to believe, but rather what he is asking us to forget.
He is asking us to forget the quarterback who, for more than two decades, was driven by that pursuit of his favorite ring.
The next one.
That will to win does not go away overnight.
