Brady at one point made sure that Crosby would not be sent to the Patriots during the Maxx Crosby trade talks.
Is Tom Brady now an enemy of Pats Nation? That could be so based on reports from a few weeks back. As the Maxx Crosby trade deals were taking shape, Brady, a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, reportedly made it a point not to deal one of the best contemporary edge rushers to the team that he basically put on the map.
Oddly enough, Maxx Crosby had a strong interest in playing for Mike Vrabel and the New England Patriots, as Dianna Russini of The Athletic noted prior to the Super Bowl.
Crosby would eventually be traded to the Baltimore Ravens for a few days, and then, due to "medical reasons," it was reported Crosby did not pass his physical, and the deal was off.
It's been reported that Brady is expected to have much more involvement in crafting the 2026 Raiders than last season, as rebuild mode has gone into full swing out in the desert.
With that notion, and the Crosby trade falling apart, he was eventually going to have to face the music. The seven-time Super Bowl champion was in the public eye a lot this weekend with the Fanatics Flag Football Classic in Los Angeles. So when Brady took part in a press conference, he was asked about the Crosby trade.
The question by the reporter was, “Question about your NFL job. . . . [G.M. John] Spytek has talked about you being more involved in football this year. How will your role be different? And did you have any reaction to the Maxx Crosby trade that didn’t happen?”
Brady's answer?
“You know, I love being involved in the NFL,” Brady said. “Like I said, I love football. I love sports. You know, I was very fortunate in my career to be around amazing people and mentors like Robert Kraft, as an owner of a team, and now getting to work with Mark Davis in the role that I’m at, and to see kind of a different team shape, the way that things are done, and how we’re evolving and growing, and, you know, we certainly have a long ways to go. And, you know, it’s—what I learned about football in 23 seasons is it's a tremendous amount of resilience, adversity, discipline, determination, and communication, of an entire organization to see, really, the value in committing to one another. So, you know, it’s always, I think, process over outcomes, and I think we’re all trying — and all of us in our own role that we have, and the role that we have, and whether it’s an ownership role or a personnel department or strength and conditioning and athletic training and obviously players and positions and offense, defense — everyone’s got to come together. Everyone has to work incredibly hard for the people next to them.”
The answer was fluff, filler, and superficial and didn't even address the core of the question. Which, let's be honest, has always been Brady's go-to when asked a tough question.
It was an honest question about a matter that was very public, but in all fairness, yes, Brady does have a duty to the Raiders and does not need to dive down a wormhole here.
The Raiders indeed do have "a long way to go," as Brady mentioned. There have not been many failures in Brady's career, but if this long journey back to the top does not turn a corner soon, it will become a sore point in Brady's career even post-football.
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