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Tom Brady and Rob Gronkowski on the Raiders? According to UFC president Dana White, the history-altering team-up was nearly a reality entering the franchise’s first season in Las Vegas.
White made the startling revelation during an appearance on ESPN’s UFC 278 with The Gronks special on Saturday night. Gronkowski, who retired for a second time in June after returning from a one-year retirement in 2020, pushed White to tell the story of the time he gave Brady a recruiting pitch to join the Raiders and asked him to explain what went wrong. White curiously replied, “Do I really tell this story right now? Do you want me to tell this story?,” before divulging a few epic details.
White claimed that he was involved in structuring a deal that nearly brought the legendary duo to Las Vegas ahead of the ’20 season before then-Raiders coach Jon Gruden nixed it at the last minute. Gruden’s tenure with the team ended in October 2021 after he resigned over emails that showed him using misogynistic, homophobic and racist language.
At the time of the alleged deal outlined in White’s story, Brady was exploring his options as a free agent after 19 seasons with the Patriots. Gronkowski, meanwhile, would’ve been at least nine months removed from his first retirement announcement in March 2019.
“I worked to put that deal together for Brady and Gronk to come to the Raiders,” White said. “And it was almost a done deal and, at the last minute, Gruden blew the deal up and said that he didn’t want ’em. All hell broke loose, man, it was crazy.”
White dove further into the story and shared that Brady was “already looking at houses” while his good friend Gronkowski waited in the wings. Perhaps sensing the internet was already frantically reacting to the story, White then attempted to clear things up by adding that “there’s so much story that goes along with this behind the scenes” before admitting the story was not meant to be made public.
“I was never going to tell that story ‘til Gronk just said it,” White said as the Gronkowski family continued to react in awe.
The star tight end eventually returned ahead of the 2020 season after being traded to Tampa Bay a month after Brady signed his contract. The Bucs would go on to defeat the Chiefs, 31–9, in Super Bowl LV in February 2021, giving Brady his seventh ring and Gronk his fourth.
Raiders fans anxiously hoping 2022 is the year may be more than a little disappointed to learn that the ’20 campaign could’ve marked a long-awaited return to glory for the franchise. Instead, the surreal scenario will now go down as one of the biggest “what ifs?” of all-time ahead of the Raiders’ third season since their move from Oakland.
As for Brady, who returned from his own brief retirement in March, the story should, at least temporarily, take the spotlight off the 45-year-old amid ongoing speculation about his excused yet unexplained absence from the Bucs. However, there’s also a pretty solid chance that the spotlight will simply shift to another interesting tidbit tying back to another fabled Brady tale.
Based on the timeline of White’s story, Raiders QB Derek Carr could now be considered as the subject of Brady’s infamous “That Motherf-----” quote from last year. Brady fired the shot at an anonymous team that backed out of his free agency bidding at the last minute to stick with another QB, leading to speculation in the year since that it could’ve been 49ers QB Jimmy Garoppolo or former Dolphins QB Ryan Fitzpatrick.
