Skip Bayless and Tom Brady Image edited by Liam McGuire
By Sam Neumann on

Skip Bayless calls Tom Brady the greatest football player ever. He also thinks Brady is embarrassing himself.

The longtime sports media provocateur unleashed on Brady after Monday night’s Raiders-Chargers game showed the seven-time Super Bowl champion sitting in Las Vegas’ coaching booth with a headset on. ESPN revealed that Brady talks with offensive coordinator Chip Kelly “two to three times a week” about game plans. The visual was jarring enough that Brady himself looked uncomfortable when cameras found him.

For Bayless, it confirmed what he’s been saying about Brady’s post-retirement career.

“This is such a bad look for everyone involved, including Tom Brady,” Bayless said on The Arena: Gridiron. “I defended him for years… and now, in retirement, the runaway GOAT is trying to flex and flaunt like he’s the GOAT. He’s bullying the league. He’s big footing this league.”

Brady signed a 10-year, $375 million deal with Fox to broadcast NFL games. He also bought a 5% stake in the Raiders worth $400 million. Those two roles were always going to create conflicts, but Brady made it worse by refusing to stay quiet as an owner, according to Bayless.

“If he just remained in the shadows with the Raiders and made it clear, ‘This was just an investment. I’m going to be an absentee owner, silent owner, silent partner to Mark Davis. I’m going to stay completely away.’ Maybe you could make it fly,” Bayless said.

Instead, Brady did the opposite. Raiders head coach Pete Carroll admits Brady talks to him several times a week. The team’s defensive coordinator gets texts from Brady about tackling issues. And there was Brady on Monday night, wearing a headset like he was calling plays.

This Sunday, Brady calls Bears-Cowboys for Fox. The following week, Chicago plays the Raiders. Ben Johnson’s team now has to decide how much they’re willing to share with a broadcaster who’s literally sitting in their upcoming opponent’s coaching booth.

“Now, if I’m the Bears, I am shutting up, man,” Bayless continued. “I am closing down… because it’s going to handicap Tom doing his job on Fox.”

Aqib Talib, who previously called games for Fox and was part of Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football coverage, pushed back on the idea that Brady was gaining some unfair advantage, arguing that production meetings are worthless because players give meaningless answers anyway.

“We as players are so programmed, we don’t give you sh*t,” Talib said. “We give you the bullsh*ttest answers that we can possibly give you, because we don’t even want to be here… They don’t let Tom Brady go to practice. So, that’s the answer right there. You don’t let him go to practice. I guarantee you he don’t get sh*t from the production meetings.”

But Bayless wasn’t buying Talib’s explanation. For him, the issue goes beyond what Brady learns in production meetings. ESPN showed him consulting with coaches during the actual game. Chip Kelly admitted in those aforementioned production meetings to Peter Schrager that he uses Brady “as a resource every single week.”

This isn’t exactly new territory for Bayless, who has spent months trashing Brady’s performance as a broadcaster for his now-former network. He’s called him “the Daniel Jones of broadcasting” and complained that Brady makes him reach for the remote. Monday night’s coaching booth appearance just gave him more material.

“He can’t say shit as a broadcaster, because he cannot as an owner criticize any player, any referee, or any coach,” Bayless said. “So, he is all-time bad at broadcasting. I have to turn down the sound because he’s so vanilla and so predictable and so Captain Obvious that I can’t listen to him anymore. It’s embarrassing to Fox to have him on as their lead broadcaster.”

The criticism isn’t entirely unfair. Brady’s broadcast work has been cautious to the point of being bland. Fox paid $375 million for insights from the greatest quarterback ever and often gets generic observations that any former player turned broadcaster could provide.

The NFL issued a statement Tuesday saying there are no policies prohibiting owners from sitting in coaches’ booths.

“I fell out of my chair last night when I saw him sitting in the coaches’ box in coat and tie — which is weird — with a headset on,” Bayless said. “He is blatantly FU-ing the entire league and my former network.”

Monday night gave Bayless the visual he needed to make his case. There was Brady, slumped in a coaching booth chair, looking like he’d rather be anywhere else when the cameras found him. Fox’s $375 million investment caught on national television looking uncomfortable in his own skin.

“He should just drop the Fox deal,” Bayless added. “He wants to be an owner and an operator of the franchise, so go do that. It’s a $400 million chunk. What do you need $375 million more for?”

The image of Brady trying to avoid the cameras made Bayless’ point better than any argument could.

About Sam Neumann

Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.

View all posts by Sam Neumann