Ahead of Fox's NFL playoff broadcast of the Detroit Lions against the Washington Commanders, concerns about Tom Brady are growing louder.
Brady, who is in the first year of his 10-year, $375 million deal to be Fox Sports' lead NFL color commentator, is also a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders. This week, his agent affirmed that he will not cut his Fox contract short due to his ownership responsibilities.
The seven-time Super Bowl winning quarterback reportedly influenced the Raiders' decision to fire general manager Tom Telesco and is helping spearhead their search for a new head coach to replace Antonio Pierce.
One of Las Vegas' top targets is Lions offensive coordinator Ben Johnson, whose team Brady will broadcast on Saturday. Brady also called the Lions-Packers game in Week 9.
With fans questioning how Brady could remain unbiased in these circumstances, Fox finally spoke out about the conflict of interest for the first time since Brady stepped into the broadcast booth.
Announcer Tom Brady looks on before an NFC wild card game.
Bill Streicher-Imagn Images
The NFL has enforced what some call the "Brady Rules" on the Raiders' part-owner, preventing him from attending pregame production meetings, other team facilities, practices to avoid conflicts of interest, such as getting extra time with Johnson outside of the formal interview process.
However, even if Brady follows the strict policy, there are still questions about his ability to broadcast the game without bias. He may be less likely to criticize Johnson's play-calling on air if he is the next head coach of Brady's franchise.
"To me, the questioning of someone’s integrity to say there is a conflict of interest is ridiculous and that’s a shame,” Fox Sports president of programming and production Brad Zager told The Athletic.
Zager's strong message was the first public statement from anyone at Fox regarding Brady since he stepped into the broadcast booth this season.
Zager referred to other broadcasters with less severe conflicts of interest as counter-examples. For instance, ESPN's Kirk Herbstreit has called every game for his alma mater, Ohio State, in this year's College Football Playoff.
Given Fox's long record of silence on the topic, the timing of Zager's comments suggested that the Brady issue was getting too big to ignore. Now, all eyes will shift to the Fox broadcast on Saturday to see how the NFL legend handles the situation.
