Anonymous Raiders Blow Whistle on Franchise Dysfunction in Leak

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Tom Brady with Mark Davis.

The Las Vegas Raiders hired Pete Carroll in the offseason in hopes that he’d be a stabilizing force. Instead, things have gotten as bad as they’ve ever been.

Tom Brady was brought on as a minority owner last year, and he’s supposedly heavily involved with the football decision-making. The Athletic’s Dianna Russini did a deep dive on the dysfunction inside the Raiders building, and things are looking bleak.

There was a lot of hope that Brady’s presence could convince players like Matthew Stafford or coaches like Ben Johnson to join the franchise, but that didn’t happen.

“Inside the building, people believed Brady would lure the hottest coaching candidates on the market, like Johnson or Vrabel — names every owner coveted last offseason,” Russini wrote. “They landed instead on 74-year-old Pete Carroll, who brought along his sons Nate and Brennan, both offensive assistants.”

He was also the one who pushed to hire Chip Kelly as offensive coordinator, but he ended up getting fired. The biggest issue is that there’s no clarity in what the team is trying to do, which is leaving players confused.

“I really don’t know what the plan is. I don’t think anyone knows,” an anonymous Raiders player told Russini.

Raiders Staffer Agrees With Antonio Pierce Comment

Head coaches usually don’t say much about the team that fired them shortly after they got fired, but that hasn’t been the case with Antonio Pierce. He was the head coach for a little over a year, so he got a front row seat to the franchise’s dysfunction.

He recently went off on the team on national TV.

“They might need decades to fix this bad boy. I’m just saying,” Pierce said on CBS. “One and done, one and done, one and done … is there another coach gone? Another coordinator? Listen, there’s gonna be something I talk about a little later where everybody’s pointing fingers. But at some point, point there and the thumb points back.”

While some might think it’s a bad look for him to act petty like that, it’s not like what he said was wrong, according to people inside the building.

“It’s hard to argue with him,” a Raiders staffer told Russini.

Does Tom Brady Deserve Patience?

If Brady is actually calling the shots on the football side of things, this hasn’t been a great debut season. However, this is also the first time he’s been a football decision maker. He was a player for a long time, but he’s never coached or worked in a front office.

He’s about to face his first big decision, which will be whether or not to fire head coach Pete Carroll.

“Many around the league — and even some inside the building — are wondering if Carroll will survive this season,” Russini wrote. “If the Raiders do move on from him, this isn’t a reset. It’s a reset on the reset. Tom Brady, the player, needed a little time to learn the job. Tom Brady, the owner, may require the same grace.”

The Raiders don’t have a choice but to be patient with Brady. This first season is concerning, but he knows a lot more football than Mark Davis. Perhaps he just needs to empower general manager John Spytek to have more power over decision-making.

Austin Boyd has covered the Las Vegas Raiders and Los Angeles Lakers for Heavy.com since 2019. A Los Angeles native now based in Las Vegas, his featured work at Heavy includes interviews with NFL stars Darren Waller and Joe Montana, and a behind-the-scenes look at “The Shop.” More about Austin Boyd