Making The Case For Tom Brady Bashing The Raiders
The episode of The Shop aired last night featuring Tom Brady and it did not disappoint. We had most of the quote from Tom talking about his Free Agency that Jerry Thornton did a great job speculating on. Well we've got more clips including the full clip of the G.O.A.T. referring to another signal caller as a 'motherfucker'.
It's such a divisive quote, I decided to do a little speculating myself. Here is a timeline of events:
February 23rd - March 2nd, 2020 - NFL Combine happens, teams can talk with Brady's agent Don Yee and get a picture of potential interest
March 15th, 2020 - TItans sign Ryan Tannehill to 4-year $118M extension including $65M guaranteed. They are officially out of the Tom Brady sweepstakes
March 15th, 2020 - 49ers HC Kyle Shanahan's best friend, Chris Simms says the 49ers will not pursue Tom Brady and will instead ride with Jimmy Garoppolo despite rumors they were Brady's top choice. San Francisco was Brady's favorite team growing up and were just coming off a Super Bowl loss where it became clear that Jimmy G wasn't a confetti QB.
March 16th, 2020 - Legal Tampering begins where teams can officially begin starting to talk to Agents of players about their intentions and agree to deals
March 16th, 2020 - Raiders agree to deal with QB Marcus Mariota who GM Mike Mayock was very high on going into the 2015 NFL Draft where Mariota went #2 overall behind QB Jameis Winston. It would appear the Raiders are out as they also have QB Derek Carr entrenched as their starter.
March 16th, 2020 - Tom Brady agrees to a deal in principle with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.
March 18th, 2020 - NFL Free Agency officially opens and players can put pen to paper on deals they and their Agents have agreed to so everything became official.
March 20th, 2020 - Tom Brady officially signs his deal with the Bucs.
Based on that timeline, the teams that pulled out at the very end were Tennessee with Ryan Tannehill, San Francisco with Jimmy Garoppolo, and the Raiders with Derek Carr. The only teams standing at the end were the Los Angeles Chargers with Tyrod Taylor (pre-Justin Herbert in the Draft), the Patriots, and the Buccaneers.
But let's focus on the end of that quote which aired for the first time last night. Shoutout Dov Kleiman for putting it out there. Brady says "But they said they didn't want me and I know what that means and I know what that feels like and I'm gonna fuck you up because of that!".
The 2020 NFL Schedule was released on May 7th, 2020, but teams were aware of their opponents months prior. The schedule release is simply the order in which those games will be played. So the only team that Brady would be playing in 2020 with the Buccaneers based on their opponents would be the Raiders, who opted to stick with Derek Carr and sign Marcus Mariota. There was buzz after the Combine that Raiders GM Mike Mayock was fairly confident in their ability to sign Brady, so it would appear the interest was there three weeks prior to Free Agency opening. It's hard to officially confirm, but here is Brady's line vs. the Raiders from that Week 7 game:
33/45 369 yards 4 TDs 0 INTs and 1 rushing TD. That's where my money is when Tom Brady is talking about 'that motherfucker'.