aAs the third quarter began in the Cowboys' win over the Browns on Sunday afternoon, FOX play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhart asked his new on-air partner Tom Brady for advice on how Cleveland could jumpstart its languid offense. “How do we move the ball and get something going here?” Burkhart asked. The man widely considered the greatest quarterback of all time could probably offer up an original idea or two for those watching at home. With a confident nod, Brady replied: “You have to stop going backwards to move forward.” Burkhart laughed, but the look in his eyes suggested he was crying inside. Is this what $375 million can buy you these days?
Brady's television debut was perhaps the most hotly anticipated sports broadcasting event of the year, with the media covering the news with breathless enthusiasm leading up to the NFL's opening weekend. The former New England Patriots legend signed a $375 million contract with Fox in 2022 to be the lead Sunday football commentator for the next decade and spend most of 2023 with Fox. In preparation Brady has prepared for his new role by studying the work of other commentators, consulting wise veterans in the sports world on how to best manage the transition from the field to the commentary booth, and even personally broadcasting live games as practice. As if his reputation as a godlike player and the wealth of resources Fox is giving him for his insights weren't enough to raise expectations, Brady has also taken on the analyst position at a time when the pressure of comparison to Fox is perhaps greater than ever. In stepping into the seat next to Burkhart, Brady replaces Greg Olsen, who was praised as last season's featured commentator for his on-screen fluency, charm and rare ability to blend story and data into a compelling overall account.
Fox relentlessly promoted the star rookie's debut throughout Sunday's early hours, taking time away from coverage of the hapless team that drew the lottery at 1 p.m. to show rare footage of Brady fist-bumping with Burkhart and chatting with Cowboys owner Jerry Jones in Hitman sunglasses. A repeat ad ended with the tagline “Tom Brady's Back to Work,” in which a former Brady spoke to a vintage audience, explaining why it was so important for him to become an announcer, despite his already enormous wealth. “What they don't understand is that because you're Tom Brady, you live football, you breathe football!” the New England Patriots' Brady explained to the modern Brady in the ad.
Fox's Brady love-fest on Sunday was so overwhelming, so inescapable, that it eventually engulfed the object of its affections themselves, spilling over into a kind of TV masturbation. A new Tostito ad starring Brady and former teammate Julian Edelman aired during the Cowboys-Browns game, and Fox split the screen to show Brady's stiff-smile face reacting to his own commercial. All elite athletes are exhibitionists of one kind or another, but I didn't expect “Tom Brady Watches His Own Performance” to be a major part of Fox's new Sunday football show.
For such grandiose reasons, when the main event finally began, it seemed an immediate disappointment. Burkhart and Brady were upbeat at first, the pair flashing bright-toothed smiles in the media box, then Brady started to speak. And then things started to go wrong. Brady, the 199th overall pick in the 2000 NFL Draft, once said he was grateful the New England Patriots took a chance on him because it “prevented me from becoming an insurance salesman.” That may have been avoided, but unfortunately for football fans, Brady couldn't escape having an insurance salesman voice. Burkhart has the quintessential sweet-talking announcer, while Brady, by contrast, is pure nasal, and his timid voice couldn't ease the sense over the first few minutes of Sunday's game that, for perhaps the first time in history, the most successful quarterback of all time was nervous. In the high-pitched voice of a prepubescent child, words seemed to come out of Brady's mouth one after the other, but the words didn't make sense on their own, and didn't form coherent sentences: “Just a perfect example of Parsons lining up elsewhere.”
Even when the words came more fluently, the ideas were invariably boring and clichéd. Brady's first-half stat sheet alone contained one phrase: “high football IQ,” at least three: “he's just too athletic,” and a Dan Marino quote as a broadcast Hail Mary when it became clear Brady was nearing the end of a sentence with no hope of finishing it naturally. Brady responded to a stunning touchdown by Cavonte Turpin on a 60-yard scorching run with a feeble “Oh!”, and his analysis of Micah Parsons' first-half sack was so generic it barely met the analytical standards of a dad drinking beer on the couch. “This guy handles double teams more than anybody. He's just too athletic. If you're a good rusher, you're going to have these problems. When you get two, you say, 'Hey, give me two, who cares?'”
This was his on-screen debut, with all the pomp and circumstance of a Friday afternoon HR Zoom presentation. Between lifeless banter with Burkhart (they thought he'd be in front of the camera more, lol), Brady rambled on and on about the power and importance of “organization,” especially in light of Dak Prescott's historical failure to make the most of his obvious talents. “If you want to be a great player, you want to be inspired and challenged,” “Discipline and accountability are the foundations of a successful organization,” and lots of other stuff like that. And while all of this may be true, at least when it comes to pro football, it makes for very boring TV.
Listening to this lame paean to organizational order, it was hard to escape the impression that Brady was a real company guy. He was a shirt-tucked narcissist, the kind of guy who would berate a colleague for not showing up for a special “game day” that employees were asked to attend on their days off. That sense of discipline and loyalty may have served Brady well as a player, but it doesn't make him a compelling in-game commentator. To be fair, this first shift behind the microphone wasn't terrible overall. There were some attempts to explain Prescott's improvisational genius, and Brady showed no fear of using a highlighter on screen. But overall it was a bit monotonous. And if there's one thing a color man can never be, it's colorlessness.
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Brady teeth He remains a corporate man after his retirement, and already has ties to Fox, where his bid for a 10% stake in the Las Vegas Raiders was Approved The league can't fire Brady by the end of this season. The NFL has limited Brady's activities and freedom of expression at Fox, given his pending ownership. He can't say much critical about the officials, and he can't go to team facilities or practices. Would Brady be more interesting without these restrictions from the next owner? Not likely. After investing hundreds of millions of dollars in a decade's worth of rigorous in-game analysis, he has little to no incentive to be scathing about players or officials. Potential conflicts of interest are avoided before they even surface. The bravest thing Fox's new headliner said Sunday was, “It's hard to get 10 yards, it's even harder to get 15 yards, it's very, very hard to get 20 yards.”
Of course, it's early days, and Brady still has a decade to play the part, and the financial wherewithal to soften the sting of criticism. But to have even a tenth of the greatness he showed as a player, he'll have to do a lot of things. First, he'll have to develop a personality, a willingness to criticize players and the league, or have a different opinion. The seven-time Super Bowl champion just can't seem to do that. The sentence on his tombstone seems to have been made. Tom Brady: Indomitable quarterback, skilled navigator of conflicts of interest, determined smile, mediocre TV personality.
