The Las Vegas Raiders are an absolute mess, but fans should fear not because Mark Davis has just the person to help fix it. No, it’s not Tom Brady. It’s Tom Brady’s longtime media companion, Jim Gray.
Just 21 months after entrusting Dave Zeigler and Josh McDaniels with the franchise and eight months after allowing them to move on from quarterback Derek Carr in favor of Jimmy Garoppolo, Raiders owner Mark Davis pulled the plug. Surely, Davis leaned on some of the people he trusts in and out of the organization to make such a big in-season decision. But Jim Gray?
On Thursday, CBS Sports Radio’s morning show hosted by Maggie Gray and Andrew Perloff welcomed Amy Trask to the show. During the interview, Trask named Gray as one of Davis’s top advisors.
How Jim Gray Links Tom Brady and the Raiders I @AmyTrask pic.twitter.com/TUWyF8AmYK
— CBS Sports Radio (@CBSSportsRadio) November 2, 2023
“He does have outside advisors,” Trask said of Davis. “Jim Gray, who has a connection with Tom Brady, is one of his very, very primary advisors. There are others. Ron Wolf, Ken Herock, both of them have very strong football backgrounds. Mike Ornstein is an advisor. So, he does have an advisor outside the building.”
Trask would undoubtedly know; she was the CEO of the Oakland Raiders from 1997-2013, so she saw Davis operate up close and presumably may have even witnessed the organization’s owner using Jim Gray as a sounding board.
The web interlacing Jim Gray, Tom Brady, Mark Davis, and Josh McDaniels is certainly unique. Gray and Brady are friends and professional partners. Brady and McDaniels had a long professional partnership that spanned over a decade. Brady and Davis attempt to create a professional partnership through a minority ownership deal with the Raiders. And then Gray serves as a primary advisor to Davis. That’s quite the entanglement, which led to McDaniels getting the boot eight games into his second season in Las Vegas.
Davis is often perceived as a real-life version of Tommy Boy, inheriting an NFL franchise from his father, Al Davis, in 2011 and continuing to run it into the ground. But while Tommy Boy was ultimately able to save the family business, Davis has yet to figure out how to build the Raiders back into a perennial playoff contender. But maybe it’s not all his fault. Maybe one of his “very primary advisors” deserves some blame, too.
Next week’s episode of Let’s Go! with Tom Brady and Jim Gray should be interesting. Indeed, they won’t gloss over their possible involvement in the Las Vegas Raiders’ decision to clean house mid-season.
About Brandon Contes
Brandon Contes is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He previously helped carve the sports vertical for Mediaite and spent more than three years with Barrett Sports Media. Send tips/comments/complaints to bcontes@thecomeback.com