Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski nearly joined Las Vegas Raiders before Jon Gruden "blew the deal up"
BOSTON – Tom Brady's post-Patriots free agency nearly had a completely different outcome.
UFC president Dana White made an appearance on Rob Gronkowski's UFC telecast Saturday night and the former Patriots tight end prodded White into telling the story of how he nearly recruited Brady to become the quarterback on the Las Vegas Raiders during the 2020 offseason.
According to White, the only thing that stopped Brady from coming to Las Vegas was then head coach Jon Gruden.
"Do I really tell this story right now? Do you want me to tell this story?" White asked Gronkowski. "I worked to put that deal together for Brady and Gronk to come to the Raiders. It was almost a done deal. And at the last minute, Gruden blew the deal up and said that he didn't want him. All hell broke loose. It was crazy. Brady was already looking at houses. It wasn't being said yet that Gronk was coming. So Las Vegas would have had Brady and Gronk the year the Bucs won the Super Bowl, except Gruden blew the deal up."
White added that "I was never going to tell that story until Gronk just said it."
"And Dana, that is exactly what happened," Gronkowski responded.
The story could also provide some insight into one of Brady's most infamous quotes.
"One of the teams, they weren't interested at the very end. I was thinking, 'You're sticking with that mother [bleeper]?'" Brady said during a 2021 appearance on HBO's "The Shop," prompting football fans to speculate who scorned the future Hall of Famer.
Could "that mother [bleeper]" have been Raiders quarterback Derek Carr? That seems to at least be a possibility based on White's story.
