Tom Brady to call FOX games while interviewing Raiders head-coach candidates

During his playing career, Tom Brady and the Patriots were considered the best in the business at finding loopholes in NFL rules. Now, Brady has found a loophole in the NFL’s rule preventing him from speaking to coordinators prior to calling games for FOX – interview them as candidates for the vacant Raiders head-coach position.

A minority owner of the Raiders, Brady is expected to help conduct virtual interviews this weekend with Lions coordinators and Raiders head-coach candidates Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn. Shortly afterward, he’ll sit down in the FOX booth at Lincoln Financial Field to call the Packers-Eagles Wild Card game on Sunday (4:30 p.m. ET). While the Lions earned the No. 1 seed and the NFC’s only first-round bye, they would face the Packers next week should Green Bay defeat Philadelphia on Sunday.

“I find it fascinating,” said insider Frank Schwab on the Yahoo Inside Coverage podcast. “Tom Brady, limited owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, is going to be part of their head-coaching interview process. He’s going to be in on the interviews, advising Mark Davis, who knows what kind of say he has.”

This week is only the tip of the iceberg, too. FOX is scheduled to air the Super Bowl. While Brady and the Raiders proceed through their head-coach hiring timeline over the next four weeks, Brady will interview candidates during the week before calling their games – or their competitors’ games – over the weekend. The NFL has restricted him from sitting in on valuable production meetings with head coaches, coordinators and players in the 48 hours prior to calling games. But he’ll still get a chance to talk with them as part of the Raiders’ process — all the way through Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans on Feb. 9.

“This is ridiculous to me,” said Schwab. “I can’t believe the NFL is allowing this to happen. We’ve already talked about the conflict of interest between Brady being a part owner and Brady being a FOX announcer. Now we take it to another level. He’s not just a 5-percent owner who’s a figurehead. We’re talking about a dude who’s going to be interviewing assistant coaches, like Ben Johnson. He’s going to be in interviews with Ben Johnson one day, and two days later, he’s going to be calling the Detroit Lions in the Super Bowl. This is absolutely just mind-numbing to me that this is being allowed to happen.”

FOX signed Brady to a 10-year, $375 million contract in 2022, prior to the end of his playing career. He began his first season in the booth during Week 1 of the 2024 season. Following Sunday’s game, Brady is expected to call another top NFC contest during the divisional round next week as well as the NFC Championship Game on Jan. 26.

Reportedly, the Raiders will interview Johnson virtually on Friday. In addition to Glenn, they’ve also submitted an interview request for Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo and reportedly have interest in Vikings defensive coordinator Brian Flores. Las Vegas fired head coach Antonio Pierce on Tuesday.

For more information on the Raiders, Lions or the NFL’s broadcast partners, visit the Las Vegas and Detroit team pages, and broadcast page at ProFootballPost.com.