Mike Florio on Tom Brady Credit: Pro Football Talk on Peacock

Tom Brady drew surprising praise during the divisional round of the NFL playoffs when he brought his A-game to Fox’s broadcast of Commanders-Lions, delivering perhaps his best performance of the season in the booth.

Unfortunately for Brady and Fox, it wasn’t enough to dispel the notion that Brady being in the booth at all represents a conflict of interest for him, the network, and the league. Though the Las Vegas Raiders, in which Brady’s 10 percent ownership stake was approved last October, did not ultimately sign Detroit coordinator Ben Johnson as head coach, plenty around the NFL still believe Brady calling games is untenable.

So much so that NBC Sports insider Mike Florio went on the record in a recent appearance on the SI Media with Jimmy Traina podcast to state that his employer would never agree to such a setup.

“I’ve been with NBC for 15 years now. There is no way in hell NBC would give Tom Brady a microphone when he owns a piece of a team,” Florio said. “They would never do it. They would say, ‘Tom you’ve gotta pick a lane. You cannot do this.’ Fox should have done that. Which explains why, if they’re willing to do it, then they’ll just brush it under the rug, do a word salad, check the box handling of it.”

As one example, Florio noted how ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit doesn’t make a pick on College GameDay for the game he is broadcasting each weekend. Florio brought up the possibility that the Raiders eventually make a Super Bowl during the course of Brady’s 10-year deal at Fox, and questioned how the network would handle it.

Even if that possibility seems absurd now, to employ Brady at all would suggest that Fox is comfortable with him calling any game at any level.

“Fans are always looking for a, ‘you’re against my team.’ Hell, he owns 10 percent of the Raiders!” Florio said. “That’s a factor in what teams are going to look at or fans are going to look at when they’re trying to assess how objective he is or isn’t being.”

To be fair to Florio, he did not suggest Fox should fire Brady. He simply said that the network owed it to the audience to “disclose” the conflicts in a more transparent way going forward.

Even that may not be enough to hold off NFL owners, though. Florio believes that if Las Vegas improves, the backlash to the setup will become even louder and could force the NFL’s hand.

“Here’s where the league will sour on it,” Florio explained. “When they realize that Brady having this ability as an owner to constantly have his finger on the pulse of the ever-evolving NFL, going into these stadiums, talking to these people. When they see a wavy line between that and the Raiders no longer being a team that the other teams don’t have to worry about, that might be when some of the owners say, ‘Hey we’ve gotta stop this.'”

It’s hard to imagine that any network would turn down the chance to bring Tom Brady into their coverage. But Florio is staking his claim to NBC’s integrity as the conversation around the GOAT quarterback continues.

About Brendon Kleen

Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.