After decades of owning the New York Jets and Buffalo Bills, Tom Brady has a new ownership stake in an NFL franchise.
NFL owners voted Tuesday to allow Brady to join their ranks, making him a new minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders. His 5% stake of the franchise is valued at around $335 million.
There’s a lot of ramifications from this news for NFL fans, a major one being how it limits his ability to scout teams in his capacity as a color commentator for Fox. Another one being whether Raiders fans will make him say that his tucked ball incompletion in 2001 was actually a fumble.
But, for Patriots fans, it’s another weird head-scratching moment where the franchise’s most valuable player ever chose to become involved with another team.
Why isn’t it Robert Kraft and the Patriots that get to announce Brady as a minority owner instead of Mark Davis and the Raiders?
“I'm sure the Krafts are protective of the organization, because Robert put his money into it. You don't want to just give it away willy nilly,” Chris Curtis said Wednesday on WEEI’s The Greg Hill Show.
Curtis wondered why Kraft didn’t give Brady an opportunity to become another human shield for the anger of Patriots fans.
“Whatever money or value Robert and his family would lose, their life day to day would improve exponentially. All of this angst and frustration and disappointment in the team would be directed at Tom, just like it was directed at Bill,” Curtis said.
Greg Hill also pointed out that the news goes against the Kraft family calling Brady one of their own.
“That's not the narrative that you've shared almost since he got here,” Hill said.
“The narrative is that he's, if you're Jonathan, that he's your brother. Robert says he was like a son.”
If Brady could become a minority owner of the Raiders, a team he has no association with, at least no positive one, then he could’ve just as easily been a minority owner of the Patriots. Why would the Krafts balk at that opportunity?
“I go back to the Week 1 against the Eagles last year, where they did that haphazard quickly planned halftime ceremony in the second half of that game, seeing Tom, just his aura. Remember seeing how demonstrative he was in that suite, Greg, during that game when he's next to Robert and Jonathan?” Curtis said.
The sight of a franchise legend could lend some more credibility to the Krafts for an increasingly angry fan base. Curtis compared it to what the Bruins have done with their team.
“It’s like seeing Cam Neely up on the [ninth] floor chucking a water bottle. There’s just something about that that makes you more credible with the fan base than having this stayed Robert, Jonathan and the TV exec du jour next to you,” Curtis said.
Mark Davis, however, jumped at the opportunity when the Krafts didn’t.
“You have the opportunity to have the greatest to ever do it, be a part of your organization, contributing on football decisions, which is what Mark Davis is saying he's going to do,” Greg Hill said.