Do we like Tom Brady?
Our score: 7 out of 10. Nothing harmful in his own words turned up and the record is clean on people, but the Saudi-backed event and the FTX saga keep it short of the top.
Brady's biggest stoush was Deflategate: he was suspended for four games over his alleged role in deflating footballs before a 2015 playoff game. A federal judge threw the suspension out on procedural grounds in September 2015, without deciding whether he did it. A US appeals court reinstated it in April 2016.
The messier legal chapter is crypto. Brady was one of the celebrities named in a class action over promoting the collapsed exchange FTX, and plaintiffs accused the promoters of helping it. In May 2025 a federal judge dismissed most claims, finding the plaintiffs had not shown he knew about any fraud. Some securities claims survived, and the judge said he might have been “uninformed, negligent, or even reckless”. That's a lesson in doing your homework, not a villain arc.
On the harm check, we found no reporting of Brady campaigning against LGBTQ+ or trans people, women, migrants or the climate, and no sign he has pushed vaccine or election conspiracies. He has also said very little on those topics. The Trump question has followed him for years. In 2022 he told Variety he hadn't talked to Trump in “a lot of years” and that the relationship was mischaracterised, and that he was staying out of politics.
The company he keeps is the other thing to check. In 2025 he signed on for a flag football tournament in Saudi Arabia, and Dave Portnoy claimed he'd be paid $75 million. Brady hit back with “Are we just picking numbers out of a hat and reporting them?” Whether you see a flag football game or a PR exercise for a government is your call, and we found no Brady statement on that. His Raiders stake also comes with league rules limiting what he can say about teams and officials.
The latest flap was small. In February 2026, on his podcast, he said he had no “dog in the fight” in the Patriots-Seahawks Super Bowl. Former Patriots Vince Wilfork and Asante Samuel were unimpressed. Brady then posted a message to owner Robert Kraft that he had his back, so he folded fast.
On the good side, the record is a bit thin, but it's decent. After Damar Hamlin's cardiac arrest in January 2023, Brady donated $10,000 to Hamlin's toy-drive charity. We didn't turn up much more verified charity work in this run, so we won't pad it.