Tom Brady was officially approved to buy a minority stake in the Las Vegas Raiders in October 2024. The former NFL quarterback turned Fox broadcaster faced a long approval process but eventually cleared the hurdles needed to let him join the Raiders.
Raiders owner Mark Davis acknowledged he was excited about Brady’s role with the team during a Tuesday news conference introducing Pete Carroll and John Spytek as Las Vegas’ new head coach and general manager combination.
‘Bringing in Tom Brady was bringing in somebody on the football side that I had been lacking having here in the organization,’ Davis told reporters, per ESPN.
Davis also explained Brady will fill the role the Raiders had hoped Jon Gruden would when the team initially hired him ahead of the 2018 NFL season.
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‘He was somebody that I brought in and really expected to be that person on the football side that would bring stability to the organization,’ Davis said of Gruden. ‘He had a 10-year contract and all that, and his head was chopped off. And we were put in a really bad position as an organization.’
Gruden coached parts of four seasons with the Raiders before he stepped down from his role early in the 2021 NFL season after emails containing racist, homophobic and misogynistic remarks he sent while working for ESPN were leaked to the media. He has not held a full-time coaching role since and currently works for Barstool Sports.
The Raiders are now onto their third different full-time head coach since Gruden’s departure, and fourth overall including 2021 interim coach Rich Bisaccia. Neither Josh McDaniels nor Antonio Pierce were given two full seasons to turn around Las Vegas’ franchise.
Davis expressed confidence Carroll – who will become the oldest coach in NFL history when he leads the Raiders into Week 1 – would be able to provide the Raiders with some stability in his new role, along with Spytek.
‘We want to build something here and again, that’s been the process and that mindset all along,’ Davis said. ‘Like I said, it got offset or kind of blown up when Jon Gruden was sent away and so we’ve been trying to get it right since then and we’ll see, but I’ve got patience to get it right, and I think we’ve got the people now – again I’ve always felt that results are what speak to me and that’s what we’ll see.’
The Raiders posted a 22-31 record in Gruden’s three-plus seasons, good for a .415 winning percentage,. Since then, Las Vegas has gone 25-38 (.397 winning percentage) and lost its only playoff appearance in 2022, under Bisaccia, to the Cincinnati Bengals 26-19.
Comparatively, Carroll has a career record of 170-120-1 and has posted a winning record in 11 of his past 12 seasons. The Raiders are coming off a 4-13 season, so the former Seattle Seahawks leader will have his work cut out adhering to his positive trend.