Las Vegas Raiders owner Mark Davis said that adding Tom Brady as a minority owner brought a needed piece that has been missing from the organization since Jon Gruden resigned.
“Bringing in Tom Brady was bringing in somebody on the football side that I had been lacking having here in the organization,” Davis told reporters. “Back in I guess it was ’18, with Jon Gruden. He was somebody that I brought in and really expected to be that person on the football side that would bring stability to the organization. He had a 10-year contract and all that, and his head was chopped off. And we were put in a really bad position as an organization.”
Davis made his comments Monday after the Raiders introduced Pete Carroll as the team’s new coach and John Spytek as the new general manager.
Gruden resigned as the Raiders’ head coach in 2021 after reports surfaced that emails he wrote over a 10-year period included racist, misogynistic and anti-gay language. Gruden was employed by ESPN as the lead analyst for “Monday Night Football” at the time he sent the emails.
Gruden sent emails to Bruce Allen, then the president of Washington’s NFL franchise, and others during a seven-year period that ended in 2018. The emails came to light during the NFL’s investigation into workplace misconduct with Washington under former owner Daniel Snyder.
Since that time, the Raiders have tried to replace Gruden first with Josh McDaniels and then Antonio Pierce before now turning to Carroll.
Brady, a seven-time Super Bowl champion, was approved to buy into the Raiders last October. He was part of the team interviewing prospective head coaching candidates, Davis said.
Davis said he hopes he’s found the pair to turn around the Raiders in Carroll and Spytek.
“We want to build something here and again, that’s been the process and that mindset all along,” Davis said. “Like I said, it got offset or kind of blown up when Jon Gruden was sent away and so we’ve been trying to get it right since then and we’ll see, but I’ve got patience to get it right, and I think we’ve got the people now — again I’ve always felt that — results are what speak to me and that’s what we’ll see.”
The Raiders went 22-31 under Gruden in his second stint with the franchise after he initially coached the Raiders from 1998 to 2001. He was traded to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and beat his former team in Super Bowl XXXVII in 2003.
The Raiders finished 4-13 this season.
