Tom Brady Denies Role in Raiders Draft, Contradicting Team Leaders

There is yet another new layer of Tom Brady’s complex post-playing career to dissect. 

Brady, a minority owner of the Raiders and Fox’s No. 1 NFL analyst, claimed he wasn’t involved in Las Vegas in passing on drafting Shedeur Sanders, who is a close friend of his.

“I wasn’t a part of any evaluation process,” Brady said Tuesday on the Impaulsive podcast when asked why Sanders slipped to the fifth round.

Brady’s statement seems to contradict previous comments from Raiders owner Mark Davis and GM John Spytek.

In January, Davis said, “Bringing in Tom Brady was bringing in somebody that was on the football side that I had been lacking having here in the organization.” After the draft, Spytek told The Athletic, “When we are looking at quarterbacks, we’d have to be fools not to involve him.”

The Raiders traded for presumptive starting quarterback Geno Smith this offseason and drafted North Dakota State quarterback Cam Miller in the sixth round. 

Brady also said that he texted Sanders after the NFL Draft to encourage him about his future. Before Brady was an owner of the Raiders, he worked out with Sanders multiple times in previous offseasons.

TV Tom

Brady also opened up about the challenges of his broadcasting job with Fox, which became a major talking point during the NFL playoffs, as Brady called the games of coaches he was interviewing for the open Raiders position.

“You’ve got to entertain, you’ve got to teach people, and you’ve got to talk about the offense, and the defense, or the coach, or the general manager, or the owner, the ref,” Brady said Tuesday. “You’ve got to have an opinion on the call.
So, there’s an art to it, and I’m working my way through the art part.”

The NFL instituted special broadcasting restrictions for Brady, given his role as a minority owner of the Raiders. Brady is entering the second season of a 10-year, $375 million deal with Fox.