Week 6 of the NFL regular season is done, and we’re coming to you from the fancy hotel in Atlanta that’s hosting the NFL’s fall meeting …
• Tom Brady was approved Tuesday as a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders to great fanfare. Brady will have a 5% stake in the team, with another 5% going to his business partner, Tom Wagner, and 0.5% sold to his ex-Patriot teammate Richard Seymour. In most cases, that sort of share of a team is almost ceremonial—it’ll get you a nice seat on game day, and access to practice, but not any real say in how a franchise is run.
The next question you’ll have is the one most team execs I’ve asked have: Just how involved will Brady become in the football operation?
One NFC exec told me, via text Monday night, that he expects Brady’s presence will help the franchise with sponsors and season ticket holders, and in recruiting top talent to the organization on every level (including players). Another NFC exec affirmed that, then added, “The most interesting thing to me is if he decides he wants to be involved in the team instead of broadcast … Maybe he gets more joy/juice out of running the Raiders than being on Fox.”
Brady, for his part, has left some breadcrumbs. He showed up at the last Raiders practice of 2023, while Antonio Pierce was interim coach and Champ Kelly was interim GM. It drew the attention of everyone in the building with the team preparing to launch a coach/GM search. Seymour was also on the search committee.
There’s been a belief internally for a while now that Brady won’t be a silent observer after officially getting his slice of the pie. Whether it happens now or a little further down the line, we’ll find out.
• The Davante Adams trade had been in the works for weeks, and Adams boarded a red-eye flight on Monday night from Las Vegas to the East Coast as it was being finalized. That’s important because it shows that this was not cobbled together at the last minute after the end of the game against the Buffalo Bills.
But it was acquiescing to Adams’s desire to play with Aaron Rodgers again, amid the feeling among teams involved that the two were working to engineer this conclusion all along (and that Adams gave the Raiders a second team he’d be willing to go to, the Saints, to help them negotiate the right trade with the Jets). It was also done at a cost that very few, if any, teams would’ve been willing to pay.
As it stands now, the Raiders get a third-round pick for Adams, which will become a second-rounder if Adams makes first- or second-team All-Pro (not likely since he has only 18 catches for 209 yards with 11 games left), or the Jets (2–4) make it to the AFC title game or Super Bowl (in which case the pick would land between 61st and 64th). That New York was willing to put the possibility of its pick being a second-rounder made its offer an outlier.
Most teams viewed Adams’s trade value, based on his age (31) and the fact that his contract balloons to an unreasonable, nonguaranteed number next year ($36 million), at a third- or fourth-rounder. Which is right around what 30-somethings Stefon Diggs and Keenan Allen were moved for in the offseason.
As for what Adams has left, one AFC exec who studied him for the possibility of a trade told me Adams is “still sudden and explosive at the top of his routes, but some of his [run after catch] ability has regressed.” Which, of course, positions him as a short-term solution for the Jets, since other parts of his game could go soon, too.
• It’s fascinating to look back now at how Raiders owner Mark Davis’s decision-making a year ago—in canning coach Josh McDaniels and GM Dave Ziegler on Halloween—was impacted by the feedback he got from players on hand.
Davis talked most regularly during the year with Adams, Maxx Crosby and Josh Jacobs, and their testimony was integral in the top-end moves the Raiders made. Less than a year later, two of the three are gone. And there’s no question the phone will be ringing on Crosby on Nov. 5.
• Related to all of this is the Haason Reddick situation. Giving up a third-rounder for Adams—the Jets actually have two of those after a draft-day trade last year with the Detroit Lions—could put New York on the hunt to recoup the pick, and Reddick’s price in the spring was a third-round selection.
Reddick now has a window to seek a trade, and his new agent, Drew Rosenhaus, has been at work on that. There are plenty of teams out there that could use pass rush help ahead of the Nov. 5 trade deadline (Detroit just joined that list). That said, Reddick won’t be a scheme fit for everyone, and his reputation for hunting sacks, particularly since he’s in a contract year, at the cost of his team, will make acquiring him a nonstarter for some.
• The Bills were involved in Adams, and that colors their decision to go get Amari Cooper. But in an interesting way, those players’ desires played a role in all of this, too. The Bills never felt like they had a chance at Adams because Adams wanted to play with Rodgers (plus the associated cap implications). Conversely, Cooper’s availability was, at least in part, a result of the Browns’ Brandon Aiyuk pursuit this summer.
Cleveland’s willingness to pay Aiyuk near the top of the receiver market rankled Cooper, who got a “compromise” raise earlier in the summer after staying away from the team in the spring as he sought an extension. So things with Cooper weren’t great, and the restructure, which gave Cooper a big signing bonus and knocked his salary down to the minimum, put the Bills in position to acquire him, and the Browns in position to land a third-rounder in the deal.
• The NFL has awarded Super Bowl LXII to Atlanta, and there’s a pretty good chance that it’ll be the first of consecutive Super Bowls in the South. The Tennessee Titans’ new stadium, which carries the same name as the old one, is set to open in 2027, making Super Bowl LXIII, in February ’29, the first one it’d be eligible to host. And the NFL has already hinted that it is eager to put its biggest event in Nashville, one of America’s fastest growing cities.
• It’ll be an interesting week in Pittsburgh. Justin Fields has a lot of fans in the Steelers organization, has been a good fit for what they’re trying to do on offense, and has an excellent rapport with the offensive coaches. There are plenty in that building who’d prefer Fields keep the job. But Russell Wilson is now fully cleared, and he will get his shot to show what he can do with the starters in the coming days.
The Steelers are likely to wait until the end of the week to make a final call on who starts at quarterback. So it could be Fields for another game, given that their center is out and the Jets’ pass rush is fierce. But another Fields start could give Mike Tomlin more evidence that he should just do what his coaching staff has wanted him to do for some time.
• Coming out of Aidan Hutchinson’s surgery, the Lions aren’t at all closing the door on him making a return. The caveat: They’d probably need to make it to the Super Bowl.
• Jerry Jones’s edginess on Dallas radio Tuesday morning got the attention of folks in the Cowboys’ organization, for sure—it was pretty out of character for an owner who’s out there speaking publicly a lot.
• Finally, a leftover from my Week 6 takeaways Monday—I asked Houston Texans star Will Anderson Jr. on the heels of his three-sack day against the New England Patriots what sort of a difference playing opposite Danielle Hunter has made for him. I thought his answer was really good. So here you go …
“I love Danielle,” Anderson said. “I love playing with him. I told him I appreciate him every time I see him in the building. He’s taught me so much this year. It’s been great. Teams are going to chip us. Teams are going to double us. Teams are going to do anything to try to slow us down, but we just keep chopping. I got to give a testament to him because he brings such a different dynamic to the group with his rush and his style of plays.
“We all feed off of him. He does a really good job of teaching us so much stuff. Having a guy like Danielle that’s so experienced, that’s gotten so many sacks, it’s great playing along with him. I can’t thank him and appreciate him enough for what he’s done so far for me and the defensive line and this team.”
This article was originally published on www.si.com as Will Tom Brady Be a Silent Observer After Becoming Part Owner of the Raiders?.
