Tom Brady used to make his money the hard way: shoved by a 300-pound lineman, racing to the end of the line, in some of the most brutal NFL games one could watch. Now, he makes more than he ever did in the Super Bowl without taking a single hit—just by talking.
Fox’s 10-year, $375 million deal with Brady works out to about $37.5 million a year. That’s 15 times the roughly $25 million he made as the highest-paid player in Super Bowl LV-era salary terms—before you even get into the performance bonuses, stock options, and the endorsement halo that followed him for decades. It’s ironic the greatest quarterback of all time is getting his biggest check only after he retires.
But Brady’s post-playing career has been a live demonstration of one of his favorite ideas: that “failure” is useful if you want to level up.
“To me, failure is amazing,” Brady said onstage at Fortune’s 2024 Global Forum, explaining the only way to build real confidence is to put yourself “in uncomfortable positions,” mess up, and then figure out the solution.
“The reality of your business and career is overcoming adversity,” he continued. “The only way to do that is to fail.”
He described the reflex of other leaders who pass blame around the room, like watching a quarterback insist the receiver caused a mistake: “I’m watching the screen like, what did you just say?”
That mindset, to own the error and fix it, has turned out to benefit Brady in his television career.
Brady’s rookie season as Fox’s lead NFL analyst was not very smooth. According to his own account,he watched his broadcasts back and cringed in real time.
“Why’d I say that?” he’d ask. “I didn’t like that. That made no sense.” He was learning a new craft in front of a weekly audience the size of a small country, and would often just read the entirety of prepared notes instead of reacting quickly.
That preparation was a part of the problem. Brady, who’s known to cover all his bases, brought pages and pages of notes and an avalanche of facts that dulled the show. He later described it as “TMI,” too much information. So, instead of trying to prepare like how he thought a broadcaster should, Brady started preparing like a quarterback again, he told The Athletic: scouting matchups, anticipating the next move, and building game plans the way he used to. His second year went much better as Brady grew into his own, instead of relying on others.
“Tom’s the quarterback,” his sports broadcaster partner, Kevin Burkhardt told The Athletic. “We’re trying to be a good teammate and get open on third down for him.”
The numbers matched Brady’s lock-in. In his second season, the “TB12” method for broadcasting began to yield measurable results. Fox saw a 6% jumpin NFL viewership during the 2025-26 regular season, averaging 18.7 million viewers per game, the network’s second-highest average since audience records began in 1988. Brady’s sophomore performance earned “rave reviews” for his shift from a broadcaster’s mindset to a quarterback’s instincts. Experts like Richard Deitsch noted on a podcastBrady became “more competent” and “lucid” by weaving in real-game experiences, such as a standout breakdown of how wide receivers track deep balls based on their shoulder pad movement. And, like any good quarterback, Brady is still working on his game.
“Even now, I probably have too much information,” Brady told The Athletic. “I think next year I’m going to streamline it even more.”
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