Tom Brady did a rare media appearance on Sirius XM Radio’s The Howard Stern Show this week and among other things, his offseason interactions with the Raiders were part of the discussion.
CBS Sports writer Will Brinson tweeted about Brady’s comments on the Raiders and it only made good sense to find the actual quote from Brady.
So here it is…
Asked by Stern if the Raiders made a strong push for him, Brady was noticeably careful with his words.
“I don’t know how much interest [they had],” Brady said of the Raiders. “They could probably speak to that more than me. I kind of just know from the conversations that I had with my agent at the time, but there were probably a lot of different teams that were interested I would say. Some of them I want to protect their privacy, too, because they still have organizations they are running and I wouldn’t want to f—- with their program at all.”
What has been reported is that Brady made the terms that he wanted and proposed those terms to an unknown number of teams.
“Per a source with knowledge of the situation, Brady essentially proposed the financial terms and other items he requested to the Buccaneers and the Chargers, and both teams agreed,” ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio reported in March.
“It’s possible [Brady] presented the same terms to other teams; ultimately, it came down to the Bucs and Chargers. Brady requested payment ‘in the $30 million range’ for each of the next two years. He did not make grandiose requests that have been suggested elsewhere, including items like personnel authority and control over the development and implementation of the offense.”
Make of that what you will, but it’s well-documented that the Raiders weren’t one of the teams in the running for Brady down the stretch. Only two teams made offers to Brady and we know the Raiders weren’t one.
Furthermore, we also know now that the “LeBron James effect” wasn’t actually a thing in Tampa. It was just another fabrication of information passed along to an NFL insider for reasons you can probably figure out on your own…
twitter: @raidersbeat
