After Saturday’s inaugural Fanatics Flag Football Classic, Tom Brady met with reporters. And while most of the questions focused on flag football, he got one about the tackle football team he partially owns.
Unfortunately, it was a two-pronged inquiry that allowed him to non-answer one half, and to completely ignore the other.
Here’s the question Brady was asked about the Raiders: “Question about your NFL job. . . . [G.M. John] Spytek has talked about you being more involved in football this year. How will your role be different? And did you have any reaction to the Maxx Crosby trade that didn’t happen?”
Brady answered only the front end.
“You know, I love being involved in the NFL,” Brady said. “Like I said, I love football. I love sports. You know, I was very fortunate in my career to be around amazing people and mentors like Robert Kraft, as an owner of a team, and now getting to work with Mark Davis in the role that I’m at, and to see kind of a different team shape, the way that things are done and how we’re evolving and growing, and, you know, we certainly have a long ways to go. And, you know, it’s — what I learned about football in 23 seasons is, it’s a tremendous amount of resilience, adversity, discipline, determination, communication, of an entire organization to see, really the value in committing to one another. So, you know, it’s always, I think, process over outcomes, and I think we’re all trying — and all of us in our own role that we have, and the role that we have, and whether it’s an ownership role or a personnel department or strength and conditioning and athletic training and obviously players and positions and offense, defense — everyone’s got to come together. Everyone has to work incredibly hard for the people next to them.”
After Brady finished, the reporter apparently tried to ask a followup regarding the failed Crosby trade. But someone else started in with another question, and the subject changed.
As to the part Brady answered, he said didn’t specifically address his current role with the Raiders. It was just word salad; big-picture observations and platitudes and filibustering and nothing meaningful about what he is actively doing to help the Raiders deal with the reality that, as he conceded, “we certainly have a long ways to go.”
Yes, the Raiders have a long way to go. And the Eastbound-and-Down Brady has a short time to get there before he’ll be labeled as a failure in his effort to turn a pro football team into a contender.
