When it comes to Tom Brady’s first Super Bowl as a broadcaster, the NFL is bending the rules.
According to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand and Nate Taylor, Fox’s lead color commentator will be permitted to attend pre-production meetings with both the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles in the leadup to Super Bowl LIX on Sunday, marking a change from the restrictions that had been placed on him throughout the regular season.
The original restrictions placed on Brady came as the result of his role as a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders. As a part of the restrictions, the seven-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback has been unable to visit team facilities and have conversations with coaches and players ahead of games, providing potential road blocks to his preparations as an analyst.
Per The Athletic’s report, Brady will be able to meet with players and coaches from the Chiefs and Eagles ahead of the Super Bowl, although he still won’t be permitted to attend the team’s practices (his Fox colleagues, including play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt and sideline reporters Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi are still allowed to attend). The report notes that Chiefs owner Clark Hunt has played a key role in getting the initial restrictions put in place due to Brady’s status as the minority owner of a division rival.
“When (Brady) was approved as an owner of the Raiders, there were a lot of discussions internally (among owners) and that ended up being the recommendation of the league office, that it didn’t make sense to have him in the production meetings,” Hunt told reporters on Tuesday, according to The Athletic. “That’s where that rule came from. Since he’s doing the game this week, we have no issue with him being in our production meetings. He’ll have the access that any broadcaster would have.”
While Brady has received mixed reviews for his performance as a broadcaster throughout his first season at Fox, his conflicts of interest in the role — real or imagined — have come into focus throughout the postseason.
Calling the Divisional Round matchup between the Detroit Lions and Washington Commanders, many wondered how Brady would handle covering the Lions, whose two coordinators were candidates in the Raiders’ coaching search (Las Vegas wound up hiring Pete Carroll with Ben Johnson and Aaron Glenn landing head coaching jobs with the Bears and Jets, respectively). While the broadcast ultimately opted to address the elephant in the room head on, Brady also noticeably went out of his way to avoid criticizing Johnson during Detroit’s stunning 45-31 defeat.
Ultimately, the reality is that such conflicts of interest for Brady will be unavoidable so long as he continues to be one of the top TV analysts for a league he also owns a team in. And while the league had previously put restrictions in place to help mitigate any such issues, those rules are apparently flexible — even in a championship game featuring one of the Raiders’ biggest rivals.
