Tom Brady given Patriots ‘formula’ to aid Fernando Mendoza after three ‘disaster’ Raiders decisions
Tom Brady has a big 2026 NFL off-season ahead if he is to help marshall the Las Vegas Raiders back to relevancy and on the path to winning ways.
The Raiders have not tasted success since they won Super Bowl XVIII back in 1984.
In the last quarter century alone, the Raiders have won just three NFL postseason games, the last of which came in the 2002 campaign when they won the AFC Conference Championship.
Since then, though, and fans of the Black and Silver have had very little to celebrate, with the latest generation of Raiders fans never having even seen their team win a playoff game.
But the NFL’s all-time greatest quarterback Brady vowed to help change that, becoming a minority owner of the historic franchise back in 2024.
Fast forward to 2026, after what can only be described as a disastrous 2025 campaign, Brady and the rest of the ownership brass have got a chance to usher in a new generation of Raiders football.
That starts with the decision-making, particularly as it pertains to the NFL Draft, free agency and exploring the opportunities on the trade market.
According to NFL Network analyst Marc Ross, the formula for success is ‘simple’, but the reality is that the execution of this is always much easier said than done.
In an exclusive sit-down conversation with talkSPORT’s senior reporter Brian T. Smith, Ross explained how Brady should look to how his former team the New England Patriots conducted their business.
“I liken this to the Patriots last year,” Ross told talkSPORT, reflecting on how they went from full rebuild to Super Bowl in just a couple of seasons.
“Tennessee is very very similar as well, putting them in the mix, where they have got a second-year quarterback, a new head coach. They’ve got the fourth pick in the draft. They have all that cap money.
“The Raiders have the second-most cap money and the first pick in the draft.
On the clock with the No. 1 overall pick in the 2026 NFL Draft, making the right decision with that pick will no doubt be paramount to the future of the organization.
It has long been expected that the Raiders will use that pick to draft 2025 Heisman Trophy winner Fernando Mendoza, who is entering the league straight off the back of leading his Indiana Hoosiers to a 16-0 undefeated record and the College Football Playoff National Championship.
“If you’re looking at that as your template, the Patriots, at what they did from year one to year two, okay you’ve got your quarterback and now you’ve got all this money to spend, you better hit,” Ross continued.
“That’s what the Patriots did. They hit on just about all of those free agents that they signed last year. Milton Williams and Carlton Davis and Robert Spillane. The trade for Stefon Diggs worked out right for them.
“So really when you’re the Raiders and the Titans who are sitting up there saying ‘Right we think we have our quarterbacks here. We’ve got our head coaches. Now we just have to use this money and hit on these free agent signings and in the draft as well.
“The formula is simple in the NFL. You gotta do this, but the hard part is actually hitting on signing guys and hitting on the draft. If you can do that, as Seattle [Seahawks] has shown.”
Late on Friday night, the Raiders made a blockbuster trade, sending superstar defensive end Maxx Crosby to the Baltimore Ravens in exchange for two first-round picks, including the No. 14 overall pick in the upcoming draft.
This move came just 366 calendar days after he penned a three-year, $106.5 million extension with the team, which at the time, reset the market for edge rushers.
The Raiders now take their tally of 2026 draft picks up to 11, and have the most cap space of any team in the NFL by over $20 million, which is a step in the right direction for Brady and co.
Learning from past mistakes
In his first year as part of the Raiders ownership group, it’s safe to say it has been a huge learning curve for seven-time Super Bowl champion Brady, who also divides his time as a color analyst for Fox.
“What the hardest part is is that people think that because he’s Tom Brady and the greatest of all time that he can just go and learn another skillset and be great,” Ross added.
“It’s so hard to be an executive in the NFL. A GM, a personnel director, a scouting director. There’s a whole skillset that you have to learn and know and you can’t just walk in and say ‘just because I’m Tom Brady I know this’.
“To me, a lot of the great players that were around really didn’t know and weren’t really good at evaluating and knowing the nuances of being an executive. And now he’s the owner as well.
“Of course he knows the game from his standpoint of being the greatest quarterback of all time. But that’s different from being the owner, or de facto GM, or whatever he does and running the show, that’s a whole different skillset that he has to learn.
“I am sure there were things when he got there that he thought ‘Oh, wait this is really how it operates, this is how it runs. This is how we have to do things.’ I’m sure he had a lot of eye-opening moments last year. We’ll see in year two if he learns from that. …
“There were three major decisions [Geno Smith, Pete Carroll, Chip Kelly] where you just assumed he’d hit, but it was just a disaster. All three were disasters. So, that shows you the difference.”
The Raiders opted for veteran leadership and experience in 2025, bringing in Super Bowl-winning head coach Pete Carroll to run point, even reuniting him with a familiar face in quarterback Geno Smith from their time shared together with the Seattle Seahawks.
But the wheels well and truly fell off, with the Raiders somehow regressing from their 4-13 campaign in 2024 to winning just three games in 2025.
Two-time Pro Bowler Smith, who was coming off a career year in Seattle, led the NFL in interceptions with 17 in just 15 games, which resulted in him being benched for the final few games of the season.
Posting their worst regular-season record since the 2014 season, the Raiders began making seismic changes for the future immediately after their season was over.
Carroll was one of the first victims of the NFL’s ‘Black Monday’ which came as no surprise to anyone, following that of offensive coordinator Chip Kelly – someone who Brady was a huge advocate of bringing to the team in the first place – who was fired mid-season.
On Friday, it was announced that the Raiders were planning to release Smith when the new league year begins on March 11, just one year on from signing him to a two-year, $75 million extension.
Having paid him $58.5 million in guarantees, this deal will arguably go down as one of the worst in Raiders franchise history, and the ownership group will be looking to do everything possible to not allow history to repeat itself.
With their plethora of draft picks and cap space, the Raiders are in a prime position to turn the organization around and escape the years and years of mediocrity.
Now the onus is on Brady and the rest of the brass to go out, execute well and deliver.
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