Here’s something nobody has said to Tom Brady in two decades: Impress us.
Brady spent almost the entirety of the 21st century dominating the game of football, winning seven Super Bowls, carving an all-but-untouchable legacy, and establishing himself as the NFL’s ultimate competitor.
And for his new gig, none of that means anything.
Sunday, Brady takes over as the top analyst on Fox Sports’ No. 1 NFL Sunday team, calling the first game in a season that will end with him on the mic at the Super Bowl. If this were anyone else, we’d say this was impossibly good luck, but since this is Tom Brady, it’s pretty much exactly what you’d expect.
Brady, who has never broadcast a game before and, until very recently, showed zero interest in doing so, will settle in at 4:25 p.m. Eastern on Sunday to call Cowboys-Browns, the first game in a 10-year, $375 million contract. It’s a landmark deal, and a pivotal moment in broadcast history.
Can a guy walk in off the field and take over one of the most high-profile jobs in sports media?
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Again, if this were anyone else, we’d say this is a case of Fox paying for name value rather than broadcasting competency. But nobody ever got rich betting against Tom Brady. As long as he prepares for this gig like he prepared for his last one, he’ll be just fine.
All the same, just being TOM BRADY behind the mic won’t carry him very far. The novelty of having a megastar calling games in Cleveland will wear off in a hurry. If Brady wants to level up and be more than just a big name in a sport coat, he’ll need to be:
Knowledgeable. This is a given, of course. Brady has to do more than demonstrate his football IQ. He has to take us inside the huddle, inside the locker room, inside the headsets, inside players’ heads. A whole range of analysts, from number-crunching nerds to beefy ex-jocks, now assesses the NFL from every angle. The GOAT will need to show us the preparation and execution that made him The GOAT to keep that horde at arm’s length.
Tony Romo won years of accolades for his skill at assessing formations and predicting plays before they would happen. It was a neat trick that eventually grew threadbare. Brady won 35 playoff games to Romo’s 2, so it’s not too much to expect that Brady will be 17 ½ times better at analyzing defenses and forecasting offenses than the former Cowboy.
Fair. Brady is presumably not angling for a coaching job, which keeps too many ex-coaches from achieving broadcast greatness. He doesn’t need people to like him; people already like him, or want him to like them. So he can, and should, be honest about both the merits and flaws of the players he’s being paid to analyze.
Tom Brady, left, teams up with Kevin Burkhardt, middle, in the Fox broadcast booth. (Harry How/Getty Images)
Working in Brady’s favor: By playing until he was 85, or so it seemed, he outlasted most of his friends and contemporaries. For now, he’s in the perfect position — he knows the game from the inside, and has the respect of everyone still playing. Now, how will he do toward the end of his contract, analyzing players who are currently in middle school? That’s a problem for 2033 Fox.
Relatable. One of the reasons why Peyton Manning always won the off-field battles with Brady even as Tom racked up the rings is that Manning comes across as one of us — richer, yes, and more obsessive, but still a little goofy in his vintage-dad quarter-zips. Brady, with his sculpted-cheekbone, supermodel-dating, no-strawberries life, carried himself like a Greek god, and every bit as remote and removed from the average NFL fan.
Brady doesn’t have to fake an everyguy schtick, griping about gas prices or backaches or whatever. But he’ll need to make the leap that the most empathetic announcers have achieved — understanding that the way a fan views the game is very different from the way an athlete does. For fans, the NFL is their refuge from the daily grind; it’s both entertainment and passion. If Brady can make those fans understand he feels both their joys and their agonies — even if he’s responsible for a few of them — he’ll have achieved something few ex-athletes have managed.
Funny. Athletes in media conferences face the lowest possible bar for humor; even the gentlest attempt at a joke gets the media laughing like the player just delivered a 20-minute “Aristocrats” riff. Journalists are so grateful for anything that’s not a robotic “both teams played hard” cliché that we’ll reward any attempt at humor with guffaws.
Brady, though, rarely even attempted to step over even that floor-level bar. He’d deliver whatever baseline insights he felt were necessary to get through the mandatory news conference, and then bam, he was gone. He didn’t just have a poker face, he had a poker soul.
That stonewalling won’t fly in front of a live broadcast microphone. We’re always told that the most impassive stars — Brady, Bill Belichick, Tiger Woods — are really hysterical behind closed doors and out of the media’s reach. Now’s Tom’s time to show that he can deliver a punch line as well as he could deliver a crucial third-and-long pass into a keyhole.
Stardom doesn’t necessarily translate to broadcast success; see Magic Johnson for proof. But stars can become exceptional broadcasters, too; Charles Barkley and Troy Aikman are Hall of Famers who are arguably even better behind the mic than they were as athletes.
It’s pretty simple, really. All Brady has to do is be a clever, witty, agreeable, intelligent, insightful, charismatic truth-teller. If this were anyone else, we’d say it’s an impossible challenge. But freaking Brady will probably have this new gig mastered by halftime.