The Raiders are entering a new era with Tom Brady as a minority share owner of the team, and as the process plays out with Brady in his new role, we’re learning more about what his presence in Las Vegas is going to look like.
What was clear over the last few weeks is that Brady was and will be very involved in the biggest decisions around the organization on the football side of operations.
Pat McAfee talked about that dynamic last week on his ESPN show, and like everyone else, McAfee is hearing that Brady has been the point man during the GM and HC hiring process in Las Vegas.
“It’s a fluid situation, but what we’re being told and hearing out of Las Vegas is that Tom Brady is running that ship,” McAfee said on his Wednesday show. “This isn’t like Tom Brady’s just a fly on the wall. This isn’t like ‘Oh, how does this go?’ What we’re being is that Tom Brady is the one asking the questions; Tom Brady is the one kind of conducting the interviews; Tom Brady is the one that is figuring out what’s the right way and what’s wrong.”
With Brady “running the ship” in Las Vegas, the Raiders settled on John Spytek to be the team’s next general manager, and it is going to be interesting to see what his role looks like next to Brady.
Spytek and Brady have a relationship that goes all the way back to college, but we won’t know what the power structure in Las Vegas looks like until it actually plays out.
Will Brady be making some of the bigger personnel decisions from a distance or will it be more of a collaborative effort?
And if it is a collaborate effort, who will have final say?
Sports Illustrated insider Hondo Carpenter addressed Spytek’s role next to Brady on his Monday podcast and he raised a few relevant questions.
“I’m going to be interested to watch, even though [Spytek] and Brady are very close, does Brady allow him to do his job or does Brady micromanage him?” Hondo asked on the Las Vegas Raiders Insider podcast. “I don’t think we’ll know that for a while because they are close and because they have such similarities.”
“Because of that preexisting relationship with Tom Brady, I think it’s going to work very well. I don’t expect there to be friction,” Hondo continued. “I think there would have been [friction] with Telesco, not because Tom is a fighter… and not because I think Brady is a guy out looking for a fight. I just think Brady knows where he wants to go and he wants to get there right now and so it’s important for him to have somebody who understands that.”
As a member of the team’s ownership, Brady can’t have an official role in the Raiders’ personnel department. But it would seem from the outside that Spytek will be more flexible if Brady decides to involve himself in decisions that other GMs might not have been as comfortable with.
Based on everything reported to this point, Brady will remain in Florida for the foreseeable future, so if he chooses to be heavily involved in personnel decisions, it will be interested to see how effective he can be in that role from a distance.
We know the Raiders are going to turn to Brady in big way when it comes to deciding on their next quarterback. Carroll said as much at his introductory press conference on Monday. That should be a good thing, and it could turn out to be a good thing to have him involved in all aspects of the personnel department.
Considering everything the Raiders have been through in recent years, why not give Brady all the voice he’s looking for?
Worst case scenario is it won’t work out… and the Raiders will hit the reset button again in a few years.
x: @raidersbeat
I hope he’s better at making football decisions than he is at broadcasting a game. Ouch! He’s one of several reasons why I won’t be watching the Super Bowl.
So Brady wanted a yes man instead of a Bill Polian protege who has ions of experience