Tom Brady recently delivered a blunt assessment of the Las Vegas Raiders‘ disappointing 2025 season, saying “nobody did a good job” as the franchise looks to rebound.
Brady spent two decades avoiding blame by winning. Now he owns a piece of a 3-14 football team, and the accountability speech writes itself.
To his credit, he delivered it anyway.
Speaking on the Stick to Football podcast, Brady was blunt about the 2025 Raiders: nobody did their job. Not one player. Not one coach. Not one person in the organization, including himself. For a franchise that finished with the worst record in the NFL, that’s not exactly a controversial take, but hearing it from a minority owner willing to include himself in the rubble is at least refreshing. Most owners find a coordinator to blame and move on.
Brady didn’t move on. He moved the goalposts to hourly improvement.
“I’d expect daily improvement, and I’d expect hourly improvement,” he said. Which is either the most intense standard in professional sports or the most Brady-esque sentence ever spoken. Probably both. When you’ve played in 10 Super Bowls, your internal clock runs differently than the rest of humanity’s.
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The Raiders overhauled nearly everything around him. Pete Carroll is gone, replaced by first-year head coach Klint Kubiak. Center Tyler Linderbaum arrived to stabilize an offensive line that needed exactly that. The defense added bodies. And with the No. 1 overall pick, Las Vegas selected Indiana quarterback Fernando Mendoza, who now carries the franchise’s hopes and Brady’s hourly expectations simultaneously.
The Raiders historically tend to peak in the offseason…
Brady’s broader point, stripped of the motivational-poster cadence, is actually sound. Good teams improve as the season progresses. The best teams peak in January. His 2025 Raiders peaked in September, then declined from there, which is a polite way of saying they fell apart completely.
The question is whether Kubiak, Mendoza and a rebuilt roster can translate Brady’s standards into wins. Passion from the ownership box is useful. Accountability speeches make for good podcast content.
In the challenging environment of the AFC West, the Raiders will require much more than just passion from ownership and accountability speeches to succeed.
*Top Photo: Ramble Illustration/Getty Images