As has been the case in so many Januaries before this one, the NFL playoffs will heavily feature Tom Brady. This time, though, Brady isn’t playing. On Saturday, he will be the analyst in the Fox broadcast booth for the Lions-Commanders divisional round game. What he says there will be examined especially closely, since Ben Johnson, Detroit’s offensive coordinator, is now a top candidate for the head coaching position in Las Vegas, where Brady is a minority owner of the Raiders. Brady is reportedly heavily involved in the Raiders’ coaching search The two men first met back in Week 9, on the sidelines of a Lions-Packers game that Brady was broadcasting.
It’s practically another NFL tradition for there to be plenty of buzz about what Brady is up to, and if what he’s getting away with may not be quite on the level. Even before Brady’s first Fox broadcast last September—which came while his stake in the Raiders was still awaiting approval from the league’s other owners—the network and the NFL agreed on a set of rules, including that Brady wouldn’t have access to other teams’ facilities or practices, and wouldn’t be allowed to interview coaches or players before games as part of normal production meetings. He’s still allowed on sidelines before games and can talk to coaches, players, or whoever he wants there, which is, of course, how he first met Johnson.
Is this still a whopping conflict of interest? Obviously yes, but Fox and the NFL seemingly got over that a while ago. The other owners, like Jerry Jones or Woody Johnson, who may now be competing with Brady and the Raiders for Johnson’s services, had a chance to voice their disapproval before the purchase went through. What those folks may be learning a step too late is that the hypercompetitive Brady tends to gain a lot of power very quickly.
This power grab is most obvious within the Raiders. Brady was never likely going to be the type of minority owner who simply shows up at big games and gets out of the way, but it was an open question when he officially bought in last October how much say his 5 percent stake would actually get him. It turns out, a lot.
“I want Tom to have a huge voice,” controlling owner Mark Davis said in December at the NFL owners’ meetings. And sure enough, according to NFL Network, Brady is “prominently” involved in the team’s coaching search. Brady has also been connected to the decision to fire general manager Tom Telesco last Thursday. He was the point man on initial (and futile) conversations with Mike Vrabel. He has a strong relationship with Buccaneers assistant general manager John Spytek, a former teammate at Michigan who was part of the front office that brought Brady to Tampa in 2020, who is the first general manager candidate Las Vegas scheduled for an interview. And he seems to be leading the Johnson recruitment effort.
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I’d call all of that moderately notable. It’s not a given that any controlling NFL owner, even Mark Davis, will cede power or give another person real agency in how a franchise is run. Still, it makes sense that the Raiders are leveraging Brady’s relationships. What’s seriously notable is that, especially when it comes to Johnson, it might actually be working.
Let’s go over the latest on Johnson. The Lions offensive coordinator, who has been a popular head coaching candidate for three hiring cycles now, has interviewed with four teams this month: the Patriots, Bears, Jaguars, and Raiders. Over the last few days, rumors and reports linking him with Las Vegas have been plentiful. On Wednesday, NFL Network’s Ian Rapoport reported that people “associated with the Raiders job” believe that “Johnson is the leading candidate and there’s a lot of people who think, frankly, he’s getting it.” Pro Football Talk reported that—while Johnson can’t have a second in-person interview with any team until the Lions’ season is over, making it too early for legitimate contract negotiations—a “massive” offer from the Raiders has been floated his way. Dan Patrick, on his radio show, said that he’d learned that Las Vegas might make more sense for Johnson than Chicago, since Johnson “doesn’t want to go against the Lions and Dan Campbell being in the same conference.”
This seems to boil down to the Raiders wanting Johnson as much as it’s about Johnson truly preferring the Raiders. The Patrick report is a bit of an outlier, and while it includes a specific knock against the Bears, it’s a strange thing to focus on as a perk of the Raiders job. It’s understandable Johnson would want fewer head-to-head matchups with his old boss for emotional reasons, but if trying to get away from Detroit and the NFC North is pure competitive strategy, it’s a bit strange to then covet the only job in the division that’s home to the back-to-back Super Bowl champions. There’s a job in the AFC South open!
But let’s say Johnson is, in fact, leaning toward the Raiders. On paper, that decision would be flabbergasting.
In the last three years, over which time he’s become the belle of the hiring-cycle ball as his Lions offenses have ranked first in the NFL in points and yards per game, Johnson has interviewed with 11 teams.
After the 2022 season, he interviewed with the Colts and Texans, and was considered a favorite in Carolina, but declined David Tepper’s pursuit. Last offseason, Johnson interviewed with the Commanders, Seahawks, Falcons, Panthers, and Chargers, and seemingly came the closest with Washington before pulling himself out of consideration while Commanders brass were on a plane headed to Detroit to interview him. This year, it’s been New England, Chicago, Jacksonville, and Las Vegas, and it’s possible that the Cowboys, who because of Jerry Jones’s delayed decision to part ways with Mike McCarthy, missed their window to interview Johnson before the Lions season ends, could still make a run at him.
And of those 11, maybe 12 jobs, Las Vegas is arguably the least attractive destination. The Raiders have no viable long-term quarterback and the rest of the roster is not competitive. They play in a difficult division, and ownership has a terrible track record when hiring head coaches and a notably quick hook—the Raiders have had 13 going on 14 head coaches since 2002 (including interims) and the past two head coaches were either one-and-done or didn’t make it through a second season.
History on the field is not any better. The Raiders haven’t won a playoff game since 2002. They have two winning seasons total since Davis became controlling owner in 2011. And with the sixth pick in the draft this April, Las Vegas is too far down the order to count on having a shot at top quarterback prospects like Colorado’s Shedeur Sanders or Miami’s Cam Ward. Trading up is a possibility, but would limit the Raiders’ ability to fill the numerous other holes on the roster. Hindsight is 20/20, but taking on this Raiders team a year after turning down the Commanders squad that’s now Detroit’s divisional opponent would be striking.
In a press conference in Detroit on Wednesday, Johnson turned down a question about what he’s looking for in a job opportunity. But it would make sense if he were interested specifically in jobs where there was a young quarterback in place for him to work with (like the Bears with Caleb Williams, or even the Jaguars with Trevor Lawrence), which one would think works against the Raiders.
That’s not to say there’s absolutely nothing going for Las Vegas. For one, the Raiders are reportedly willing to shell out big money for coaches. Davis’s sale of 25.5 percent of the franchise last year to Brady and a handful of investors with private equity backgrounds has helped the franchise go from one of the more cash-poor organizations in the league to one that’s recently been able to afford the cost of buying out the contracts of former coaches Jon Gruden, Josh McDaniels, and Antonio Pierce, and general managers Dave Ziegler and Tom Telesco, and is prepared to keep spending. Money tends to matter in these kinds of situations, and last hiring cycle ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported that Johnson had a high asking price that “spooked some teams.”
So, maybe that works in Las Vegas’s favor. Telesco’s firing, too, gives the next Raiders coach the opportunity to bring in a general manager he’s aligned with, something that doesn’t exist in the other job openings outside of the Jets. Commanders assistant general manager Lance Newmark, for instance, went to Washington after spending several years with Johnson in Detroit and could be someone Johnson would like to work with.
But the X factor seems to be Brady. According to Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer, he’s the reason Johnson, while trying to be choosy, took the interview with the Raiders in the first place. And if this does work out—if the Raiders are the end result of Johnson’s three-cycle odyssey to become a head coach—it’ll be a striking sign of Brady’s ability to make an NFL destination desirable and a symbol of how, a year into his post-playing career, he’s managed to control part of the NFL postseason and the offseason dialogue.
What, exactly, Brady could do or say in the broadcast booth Saturday that would make a meaningful difference in a coaching search is hard to imagine. Hopefully, he and play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt address Brady’s multiple (and conflicting) jobs in a normal way and don’t try to pretend they don’t exist. It’s an unprecedented situation and it would be interesting to hear Brady talk about it. Still, it’s quite the show of strength for Brady to call this Lions game—and potentially more, all the way to the Super Bowl, which is on Fox—featuring his potential future employee.
Although maybe this was always the obvious result. It’s the playoffs, and Tom Brady seems to be getting everything he wants.
