There’s irony in Tom Brady stepping right into FOX’s No. 1 broadcast team to start his career as a color commentator on NFL broadcasts.
As anyone who has ever listened to the broadcast of a game that Brady played in knows, his path to quarterbacking stardom wasn’t nearly that smooth. At Michigan, Brady was better than super-recruit Drew Henson, but Wolverine coach Lloyd Carr was blinded by Henson’s pedigree and split time between them.
Of course, in the NFL Brady was the Patriots’ sixth-round pick, who sat his first season and it took a Drew Bledsoe injury to get him on the field. Being forced to prove himself helped spur him to become the greatest player in NFL history.
None of that is happening on TV.
FOX was so eager to get him that they signed him before his playing career was over and waited while he sat out a year in 2023. In that time, Greg Olsen was the No. 1 color commentator and as it turned out, he is good at it.
But the former tight end has now been demoted to the No. 2 team with Brady aboard. Olsen is better than Brady, but like Michigan with Henson, FOX was blinded by Brady’s star power.
The problem with Brady is simple. Because he’s Tom Brady, FOX had to pay him a lot — 10 years, $375 million — and if they’re paying him that much they can’t exactly put him on a Giants vs. Commanders game.
The crazy thing about the money that commentators get paid is that they make little impact on which game someone watches or if they tune in at all. This isn’t like choosing between Stephen Colbert, Jimmy Kimmel or Jimmy Fallon. People would watch their favorite team, a game they have money on or a great matchup even if the color commentator was your uncle doing his Donald Duck imitation.
Most fans don’t know who is on the broadcast until they turn the game on. Brady’s debut might have been the exception to that given how much it was hyped and how much he’s being paid. But that novelty has likely already worn off.
But for those who did tune in to the Cowboys and Browns, Brady sounded like a guy who should be on FOX’s second or third team. That’s not an insult and he wasn’t bad. But he didn’t sound comfortable yet.
It’s a hard job. It takes an innate feel to know when to jump in, and how much to say in a short window without leaving too much quiet air or talking over the color commentator. It’s more like improv comedy than a natural conversation. It’s harder for athletes to understand where the sweet spot is between being too rudimentary or too technical for the audience.
All of that takes practice and repetition. Calling previously recorded games or live games with no audience is helpful, but it’s like a quarterback practicing with a red jersey on. Until a pass rush or the audience is real, it’s doesn’t actually simulate the real thing.
Brady’s biggest strength was breaking down a replay. It felt like he’d practiced that and did a nice job pointing out what he saw and what it meant. On the last play of the first quarter, he quickly sized up Micah Parsons being in a position to sack Deshaun Watson, moments before Parsons did just that.
When he wasn’t sure, Brady smartly chose hesitating over overtalking. Other than a few “Wows” on big plays while Kevin Burkhardt was talking, he didn’t let himself get in the way. Overall, he got better as the game went on.
But he’s got a long way to go before he belongs on a top team. He sounded (understandably) nervous and had a cadence filled with odd pauses. He repeated himself and too often talked about effort, juice and fire in place of actual analysis and hasn’t figured out where to insert his own experience and stories into the broadcast yet.
Notably, he stammered when put in a position where it would be natural to criticize either quarterback — Dak Prescott’s playoff issues and Deshaun Watson’s miserable performance in Cleveland — which was a concern about Brady before he ever got on the air.
Kevin Burkhardt was good trying to guide Brady along. He set him up with smart questions and humanized him by teasing him about the Tostitos commercial featuring Brady that had aired during a break in the action.
It’ll be interesting to see how Brady improves from Week 1 to Week 2, but the real question is how good can he get before FOX has him on its Super Bowl broadcast in February. He’s got a lot of time and a long way to go.
Follow MassLive sports columnist Matt Vautour on Twitter at @MattVautour424.
