After Saturday’s inaugural Fanatics Flag Football Classic, Tom Brady met with reporters. And while most of the questions focused on flag football, he got one about the tackle football team he partially owns.
Unfortunately, it was a two-pronged inquiry that allowed him to non-answer one half, and to completely ignore the other.
Here’s the question Brady was asked about the Raiders: “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 answered only the front end.
“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, 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.”
After Brady finished, the reporter apparently tried to ask a followup regarding the failed Crosby trade. But someone else started in with another question, and the subject changed.
As to the part Brady answered, he said didn’t specifically address his current role with the Raiders. It was just word salad; big-picture observations and platitudes and filibustering and nothing meaningful about what he is actively doing to help the Raiders deal with the reality that, as he conceded, “we certainly have a long ways to go.”
Yes, the Raiders have a long way to go. And the Eastbound-and-Down Brady has a short time to get there before he’ll be labeled as a failure in his effort to turn a pro football team into a contender.
Veteran receiver DeAndre Hopkins is looking for a new NFL team. He’s hoping to tap into an old connection.
Hopkins recently told TMZ that he’d like to reunite with quarterback Kyler Murray in Minnesota.
“Kyler . . . that’s my bro, man,” Hopkins said. “Kyler is like family. Whatever I can do for someone like that -- if Kyler needed me, if the Vikings need me, they know I’ll be there.”
The remark reconfirms the perception that Murray is the new starter in Minnesota (or, at a minimum, that it’s Murray’s job to lose).
The more pressing question for Hopkins is whether the Vikings envision a spot for him in the lineup. The depth chart is led by Justin Jefferson, obviously. Jordan Addison is the No. 2, as he approaches the last year of his first-round rookie deal. (The question of whether they’ll exercise his fifth-year option may not be the no-brainer it once seemed to be.) Jalen Nailor, mainly a slot receiver, left in free agency.
Hopkins has a specific and unique skill set. He displayed it during Saturday’s flag football event, boxing out an overmatched Team USA defender to make a one-handed catch of the undersized ball.
Hopkins turns 34 in June. He overlapped with Murray in Arizona from 2020 through 2022. He caught the Hail Murray touchdown pass amid a sea of Buffalo defenders, capping arguably the highlight of Murray’s career to date.
The challenge becomes setting aside Hopkins’s past achievements and assessing his expected contributions as of 2026. He had limited opportunities with the Ravens in 2025, catching 41 passes on 59 targets for 437 yards and four touchdowns.
Still, Hopkins could be a potent weapon in the red zone, giving Murray an option for jump balls in the back corner if/when the defense focuses on Jefferson.
New Ravens head coach Jesse Minter is taking over a team with very high expectations.
The betting odds have the Ravens’ win total at over/under 11.5, the highest win total in the NFL. That means Minter’s team would have to go at least 12-5 to exceed expectations in Year One.
In 2025 the Ravens finished a disappointing 8-9, leading to the departure of head coach John Harbaugh. Minter was brought in to take the Ravens back to where they were in 2024, when they went 12-5. That’s where expectations are this year.
Behind the Ravens, nine teams are tied for the next-highest win total: The Bills, Chiefs, Chargers, Lions, Packers, Rams, Eagles, Seahawks and 49ers all have their win totals set at over/under 10.5.
Flag football is very different from tackle football. And the current and former NFL players facing the U.S. men’s national flag football team are learning that.
The first half of the game between the U.S. team and the Wildcats (captained by Joe Burrow and Jayden Daniels) did not go well for the pro players. The first drive by the Wildcats failed to result in a first down. The U.S. team went right down the field, with the NFL players struggling to master the skill of grabbing flags.
The opening drive by the U.S. team included multiple penalties against the Wildcats for excessive contact. After quarterback Darrell “Housh” Doucette III scored a touchdown on a running play (which included another penalty for illegal contact), Doucette chirped at non-football player Logan Paul. Paul removed Doucette’s sunglasses and threw them, drawing another foul.
Then came a pick six of Burrow, two plays later.
The Wildcats finally woke up, with a long touchdown pass by Burrow to DeAndre Hopkins, who easily boxed out the defender caught the undersized ball with one hand.
The U.S. team scored on the next drive, pushing the score to 19-6 after one half.
While the NFL players are generally bigger and faster and stronger (that said, Doucette seems to be able to weave through and around them), the tackle football players are clearly out of their element. If NFL playershope to represent the U.S. in the 2028 Olympics, they’ll need time to learn the game, and to figure out the rules. Which will take more than a casual commitment.
Free agent defensive end A.J. Epenesa is signing a one-year deal worth up to $5 million with the Browns, Adam Schefter of ESPN reports.
Epenesa, 27, has spent his entire career in Buffalo since the Bills made him a second-round pick in 2020.
In 2025, he played 16 games with two starts and totaled 32 tackles, 2.5 sacks, nine quarterback hits, two interceptions and four passes defensed.
In his career, Epenesa has recorded 135 tackles, 24 sacks, 53 quarterback hits, four interceptions, 21 passes defensed and five forced fumbles.
The Browns are also signing wide receiver/returner Tylan Wallace, Mary Kay Cabot of cleveland.com reports.
Wallace, who turns 27 in May, is following Todd Monken from Baltimore after spending his career with the Ravens.
A fourth-round pick in 2021, Wallace played 14 games with two starts last season. He caught four passes for 45 yards and a touchdown and averaged 24.6 yards on five kickoff returns.
He has only 22 receptions for 305 yards and two touchdowns in five seasons, with one punt return touchdown.
