In August, while looking ahead to his new job, Tom Brady saw parallels to his old one. “In some ways, now I’m just quarterbacking something a little bit different,” he told the commentator Stephen A. Smith during an appearance at Fanatics Fest in New York City. “But in the end, you’re sitting in that hot seat, you’re the one calling the shots, and that’s where I like to be. That’s where I’m most comfortable.”
The seat in the broadcast booth has, in fact, been plenty hot. In his debut season as lead NFL game analyst for Fox, Brady has faced the type of scrutiny––and at times scorn––usually reserved for an embattled head coach. Nearly two years after he took his last snap, Brady remains one of the league’s most discussed figures.
John Ourand, the sports correspondent at Puck, has graded the future hall-of-famer’s on-air performances in a recurring column feature called the Brady Meter. His scores for Brady have ranged from a high of a B+ to a low of a C- throughout the season, roughly rounding out to a B- average.
“Some people accuse me of being too kind in my letter grades,” Ourand admits.
Others have been far less kind. Brady has been criticized for various things, such as going silent during game broadcasts and forcing play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt to battle gusts of dead air. When he does speak, Brady gets flagged for the sound of his voice, which one sportswriter said “teeters between mildly annoying to nails-on-a-chalkboard.” Sometimes even football’s greatest winner can’t win.
Raves have been harder to come by, but Brady has his admirers. Michael Wilbon, the cohost of ESPN’s Pardon the Interruption, said last month that he “love[s] listening to Brady on Sundays do games.” Ourand tells me he appreciates that Brady doesn’t get too excitable in high-pressure situations, with the athlete exuding the same calmness on air that he displayed throughout his playing career.
“He’s a pretty above-average broadcaster right now, in my opinion,” Ourand says, noting that Brady has showcased his high football IQ when breaking down plays on replay. “He is able to see the field in a way that most people can’t,” he adds. “If he’s able to take that and discuss it, then he’s going to be a great broadcaster.”
Brady has improved markedly since his awkward early-season showings. His delivery has become less stilted, his chemistry with Burkhardt has improved, and he has even produced some standout performances. Brady was widely praised for his calling of last month’s thriller between the Buffalo Bills and the Los Angeles Rams, with particular recognition for his critique of a costly late-game decision by Bills coach Sean McDermott.
He has also shown a greater willingness to be critical of players, particularly fellow signal-callers: During last weekend’s game between the New Orleans Saints and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Brady lamented a “D-throw in a critical moment” from Saints quarterback Spencer Rattler.
Still, Brady is not inspiring any comparisons to John Madden quite yet. His entrance into broadcasting has been more reminiscent of that of his childhood idol, Joe Montana, the legendary former quarterback who proved to be better at leading two-minute drills than speaking on camera. Montana didn’t even spend a full season in his role as a studio analyst for NBC, and he made the decision to quit the job midway through the network’s broadcast of Super Bowl XXX in 1996.
Brady probably isn’t going to bail at halftime when he calls Super Bowl LIX next month in New Orleans, but he will be under pressure to salvage an up-and-down rookie season in the booth.
“I don’t think many people are going to remember what Tom Brady did week 7 or week 13,” says The Athletic’s Richard Deitsch, who covers sports media. “What NFL fans will remember will be his call on that Sunday in New Orleans.”
There may, however, be more interest in what he does after the Super Bowl. Brady’s future has become the subject of rampant speculation in recent weeks, with a growing media chorus suggesting that he will bolt from Fox after just one year. A Fox spokesperson said the network fully expects Brady to return next season, noting that he is under contract. But others believe he won’t be long for the media world due to his status as a limited owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, which has posed an impediment to his broadcasting job and raised ethical concerns. Brady is expected to play a significant role in a Raiders offseason that will include a search for both a new head coach and general manager, as well as a top 10 pick in the NFL draft.
For now, Brady isn’t addressing his plans. (A Brady representative declined to comment.) But in his conversation with Smith back in August, Brady sounded like someone eager to embark on a long career in television, saying at the time that he was anxious for fans “to see things through my eyes.”
“I get to express it on TV for a lot of years going forward,” he said.
The most successful NFL color commentators have boasted styles and personalities as varied as the positions on a football team. Madden was the jolly everyman whose enthusiasm seeped through the telestrator. Troy Aikman has combined a pleasant drawl with sharp-elbowed commentary to become arguably the best in the business. Greg Olsen, who preceded Brady as Fox’s top NFL analyst, has won plaudits for his on-the-spot analysis and understanding of modern football concepts. There is no one-size-fits-all template for the job, but it is still unclear which one fits Brady.
“I don’t know if Brady has a differentiating characteristic yet,” says Deitsch. “I think that usually comes after a couple of years in the booth.”
Fox first announced Brady for the role in May 2022, when he was preparing to enter what would be his final NFL season. The network had just lost the acclaimed tandem of Aikman and play-by-play announcer Joe Buck to Monday Night Football on ESPN, and responded by hiring the league’s most decorated player. Worth $375 million over 10 years, the deal eclipsed Brady’s career earnings in the NFL and made him the highest-paid sports broadcaster in history before he’d even called a single game.
Brady officially retired from the NFL in 2023, but opted to take a year off before starting at Fox. When the network aired the Super Bowl that winter, Olsen shined in the broadcast, ratcheting up the pressure on Brady to deliver in this year’s game.
“He’s not going to have a disaster broadcast. I think he has too many games already under his belt,” Deitsch says of Brady. “The question will more so be: Will he have a revelatory broadcast the way, a couple of years ago, Greg Olsen [did]? People came away from that Super Bowl like, Wow, Greg Olsen is a legitimate number one, A-chair analyst.”
In the spring of 2023, nearly four months after retiring from football, Brady reached an agreement to purchase a minority stake in the Raiders. Fox reportedly gave its blessing to the arrangement, but it made some NFL owners and executives wary about potential conflicts of interest. The league sought to assuage those concerns in August, when it announced that Brady would face a number of unique restrictions as a broadcaster due to his role as an owner––although, notably, he is not barred from calling Raiders games.
Under the rules, Brady is not permitted to enter another team’s facility, nor is he allowed to observe a team’s practice or attend production meetings. Partaking in those activities, which involve meetings with players and coaches, is standard practice for NFL analysts, providing them with valuable insight to share during the game broadcasts.
“If you talk to any analyst, they will always talk about how important meeting with the teams is before these games,” says Ourand. “I have to believe that it hurts the way that Tom Brady prepares for a game.”
The NFL also said that Brady would be prohibited from publicly criticizing league officials, a rule he appeared to violate during Fox’s broadcast of a November game between the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers. After Lions safety Brian Branch was ejected for a helmet-to-helmet hit, Brady registered his disagreement on air, saying he didn’t “love that call at all.” The NFL later said that Brady didn’t cross the line. “The concern would be if Tom was egregiously critical of officiating or called into question the integrity of an official or the crew,” a league spokesman said at the time.
Deitsch says the restrictions on Brady “do impact viewers” and the way they take in the games.
“That’s just the reality,” Deitsch says. “I just think inevitably you pull some punches with officiating, just because you have to know in the back of your mind that you’re limited in terms of how far you can go. I think you probably hold back on certain things when it comes to other owners in the league, because you’re an owner yourself.”
Fox insists that Brady’s ties to the Raiders have not impacted his performance as a broadcaster, but others aren’t sure it’s sustainable for him to hold both jobs. The longtime sportscaster Dan Patrick called Brady’s dual roles “problematic” in November, and earlier this week, Patrick predicted that Brady would be “one and done” and leave Fox after the Super Bowl.
As it currently stands, Brady is poised to figure prominently in both the Raiders’ offseason and the NFL’s postseason. He will reportedly be involved in the Raiders’ coaching search, even taking part in the team’s interviews with candidates. According to NFL Network, Brady recently reached out to former coach Bill Belichick, with whom he won six Super Bowls as a member the New England Patriots, about reuniting in Las Vegas. (Belichick, who also ventured into the media space this season, agreed to become the head football coach at the University of North Carolina in December; Vanity Fair has reached out to a representative for Belichick for comment on the reported conversation with Brady.) In addition, Raiders controlling owner Mark Davis has said that he wants Brady to have a “huge voice” in team matters, including the selection of the squad’s next starting quarterback.
Meanwhile, Brady’s actual voice will help soundtrack Fox’s coverage of the NFL playoffs, which kick off this weekend. But whether it’s next month in New Orleans or at some point further down the line, many believe that it is only a matter of time before Brady ditches the booth for the front office.
The people who end up in long-term broadcasting careers, Deitsch says, often get addicted to the grind and life on the road. “You love the travel, and you love hanging out with the crew, and you love all that,” he says. “If that’s Brady and he’s there eight, nine years from now, I’ll be very surprised.”
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