Monday night magnified Tom Brady's conflict of interest

Hearing about something is one thing. Seeing it is another.

From the moment Tom Brady both took the job as the No. 1 analyst at Fox while also trying to buy a piece of the Raiders, the conflict of interest was lurking. It became obvious on Monday night, with the video of Brady embedded in the Raiders’ coaching box, wearing a headset and watching a tablet.

This minority owner is hardly a silent partner. He’s not in the owner’s suite, sipping Chardonnay and snacking on avocado chips. He’s involved with the Raiders. Very involved. And the man whose favorite Super Bowl ring is “the next one” surely wants nothing more than to expand his collection to eight. (And then to nine.)

Meanwhile, he enjoys a window into other teams, other players, other coaches that no other owner has. For good reason. It crosses a line that the league should never allow anyone to cross.

The good news is that more and more voices have joined the chorus. Brady must pick a lane. If he won’t do it voluntarily, Commissioner Roger Goodell needs to mandate it.

Some have tried to downplay the situation. Brady being at games is no different than watching film, they say. No one is telling Brady secrets, they say.

It’s much more complicated than that. As Albert Breer of SI.com said on Twitter last night: “People think of just the strategic stuff, but it goes deeper than that. You could also gather pertinent detail on players in production meetings to inform free-agent signings and trades. Or figure out who the key [assistant] coaches are and try to poach them.”

And, yes, Brady is now allowed to participate in production meetings. (He wasn’t last year, until the Super Bowl.)

It’s more than the production meetings. Brady is on the field before the game. He can watch and listen to players. He can watch and listen to coaches. He can pick up plenty of seemingly innocuous nuggets that will, in time, become a tapestry of intelligence that can help the Raiders assemble the best possible collection of players and coaches.

No other team has that edge. No other franchise has an owner embedded in one of the biggest games of the week, each and every week of the NFL season.

Appearing on the Tuesday edition of ESPN’s First Take, Marcus Spears put it bluntly.

“I hate it,” Spears said. “It’s abhorrent for me, for his job. I love it for his team. . . . This should not happen with him being a commentator of NFL football games. It actually questions the integrity of the NFL.

“Now, teams have to be smart and not divulge information when he’s on a call, because at some point the Raiders are gonna play the teams that he’s sitting in on these meetings. . . . [T]here’s information shared when you have these pre-production meetings for games. There’s plans that coaches have. There’s guys that they tell you to be on the lookout for how we’ll use them.”

And here’s the best point anyone could make. “So Jerry Jones [is] gonna sit in on the Giants meeting, because he about to call the game,” Spears said. “Y’all good with it?”

It’s no different for Brady. He wants the Raiders to win. Period. And he has a unique and unprecedented way to leverage his day job to make that happen.

Next up for Brady? He’ll call the Cowboys-Bears game on Sunday. One week before the Raiders host the Bears.

If the league office isn’t going to do anything about it, the teams need to do it. And it’s more than just being careful about what is said to him.

Think of it this way. If Brady were only an owner of the Raiders and Peyton Manning were calling games while owning a piece of the Broncos, would Brady tell the coaches and players to be careful? Or would Brady tell every coach and every player to not say a single word to Manning, or to anyone else from his network? To not even look at Manning, or at anyone else from his network? To go the other way, whenever Manning, or anyone from his network, is approaching?

That’s how every team should handle the situation. Freeze Brady and Fox out completely, until Brady picks a lane. Or until Goodell — who suspended Brady ten years ago for cheating — picks it for him.

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