Seattle Seahawks head coach Mike Macdonald had some advice on how to win the Super Bowl, he admitted on The Dan Patrick Show. He revealed that Giants head coach John Harbaugh gave him some tips. However, he chose to keep another name a secret, highlighting that they’d have a “conflict of interest” if he named them.

That’s how Tom Brady found himself dragged into this story. Many fans believed Tom Brady could be the mystery person Mike Macdonald was talking about. Brady is a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders. However, Macdonald has shut down rumors of the iconic quarterback being this mystery person.

“I reached out to Mike Macdonald to get clarification on his comments on the @dpshow,” Zach Gelb wrote on X. “I asked if @TomBrady was the person with the ‘conflict of interest’ that gave input to the Seahawks before the Super Bowl. Mike told me it wasn’t Brady that he was talking about in the interview.”

“I called John Harbaugh, and I talked. He was great. Probably can’t mention one guy that really helped us out that had some conflict of interest,” Mike Macdonald had said.

A former Patriots player sending tips to the Seahawks would not have been unusual either, because it’s just talking. However, the ‘conflict of interest’ might have arisen due to the staffing changes in the Raiders and the Seahawks that were confirmed after the Super Bowl.

As highlighted by 12th Man Rising’s Lee Vowell, the Raiders had already fired former Seahawks coach Pete Carroll and were getting ready to hire Seattle offensive coordinator Klint Kubiak as their new head coach. And the Raiders had announced long back that Brady was to play a key role in the search for their new head coach.

“If you want to put two and two together here, Brady was in the process of hiring Klint Kubiak, who was the offensive coordinator of the Seahawks at the time, and it would behoove the Raiders for the Seahawks to win the Super Bowl because it makes their hire look better if Klint Kubiak is coming off a Super Bowl championship,” Sports Illustrated’s Albert Breer told 98.5 The Sports Hub. “And then, obviously, Brady had also just called the NFC title game. So Brady was in the booth for the Seahawks beating the Rams. So there was a level of communication there, too.”

Simply put, Brady knew both the Seahawks and Patriots well. Josh McDaniels, being the Patriots’ offensive coordinator, also complicates the matter, as the former quarterback played in his system for years and won Super Bowls.

Patrick guessed that the mystery figure might be Bill Belichick, Brady’s longtime head coach. However, Macdonald shut down that idea as well.

“I’m not that cool,” the Seahawks head coach said. “I’ve had a beer with coach Belichick, and that was pretty cool.”