“I have always believed the sport of football is an ‘all-in’ proposition—if a 100 percent competitive commitment isn’t there, you won’t succeed, and success is what I love so much about our game.” —Tom Brady, February 1, 2022, announcing his retirement from the NFL (the first time)
“[I] live and breathe football. … [My] football journey isn’t even close to done.” —Tom Brady, September 2024, hyping up his entry into NFL broadcasting
Perhaps you’ve heard—Tom Brady is back to work. The seven-time Super Bowl champion and three-time league MVP has been calling games on Fox this season, the latest former player to make the jump from gridiron to broadcast booth.
The reviews so far? The greatest quarterback to ever play the game has been, well, fine as a commentator. Some have complained that he doesn’t exactly have a voice for an audio medium. His noises of excitement have intruded on big plays. I’ve seen complaints that he leans too much on clichés, or that he hasn’t added enough insight gleaned from his own Hall of Fame–worthy career. Even if you feel he’s been a better broadcaster than those critics claim, it’s hard to argue that he has really separated himself from any of the other commentators calling games on Sunday afternoons.
Of course, it’s been only six weeks. It took Joe Buck years to drop his oxygen-killing stiffness and develop the nonchalance and humor that has turned him into the best play-by-play broadcaster in sports. Brady has already shown development on this front. His call on Jameson Williams’s touchdown last Sunday was a treat:
And his breakdown of Dak Prescott’s first-quarter interception brought a lot to the broadcast:
But on Tuesday, Brady—broadcaster, NFL GOAT, Birmingham City FC minority owner, onetime FTX hype man, and so much more—also became something else: part owner of the Las Vegas Raiders. Brady, whose purchase of a stake in the franchise has been pending for months, wrote on X that he was looking forward to the “relentless pursuit of excellence” with the Raiders and said that he is “eager to contribute to the organization in any way” he can. Mark Davis, the majority owner of the team, told reporters, “Although Tom can’t play, I think he can help us select a quarterback in the future and potentially train as well.” This could just be a quip from Davis (what else are you supposed to say when adding a Hall of Famer to your ownership group?) but if Brady does actually get input into roster decisions, it would give him rare influence for a minority owner and further blur the line between broadcaster and team executive.
But with NFL ownership comes NFL restrictions. The league wants to prevent a conflict of interest or a competitive imbalance—and thus has restricted Brady’s access to other teams. It has also put restrictions on what he can say on air. As a part owner, Brady cannot:
- Enter another team’s facility
- Watch another team’s practice
- Attend broadcast production meetings with players and coaches
- Publicly criticize game officials
- Publicly criticize other teams
- Speak to members of other teams for anything other than “strictly social” communication
Broadcasting involves more than showing up to the booth on Sundays. There is a lot of prep. Think about all the times you may have heard a crew talking about what a coach told them that week or what they saw in practice. Brady can bring none of that to his commentary. For now, Brady can rely on the insights he’s gained over his 23-year career, particularly since he’s faced so many of the game’s current players and coaches, but eventually the game will evolve—and it will hurt him that he’s unable to talk ball with those who are still on the field.
How can Brady reconcile being a broadcaster and an owner at the same time? If broadcasting is the next step in his “football journey,” and football is an “‘all-in’ proposition” that requires a “100 percent competitive commitment,” then why agree to broadcast with an arm tied behind his back? It all feels rather pointless.
The best broadcasters have an easy flow. Despite what must be an intense amount of pressure from producers (not to mention from the league) to present the game a certain way, on-air personalities have to make audiences believe that they are calling it like they see it. Take Monday night for example, when the Jets and Bills racked up more than 200 yards of penalties. While ESPN color commentator Troy Aikman offered a defense of the officials after a couple of those penalties (“I guess they gotta throw the flag, don’t they? It’s easy to get upset with the officials. But those were penalties.”), he was also able to ardently disagree with calls he didn’t like.
Over on the ManningCast for that same game, Brady’s old coach, Bill Belichick, had the best sound bite of the night when he was openly hating on the Jets:
Belichick’s comments wouldn’t be appropriate in a more buttoned-up, traditional broadcast booth role like Brady has. But could Brady even say something like what Aikman did postgame, when Aikman went on an extended monologue about how he could see the Jets “unraveling” over the rest of the season? Or would that run afoul of the rules that prevent Brady from criticizing other teams? (This, by the way, was tame stuff from Aikman, who has ripped referees and teams when they deserve it.)
Adding to the frustrating Brady viewing experience: Fox keeps assigning him to the Cowboys. Brady has called six games in his short broadcasting career; four of them have been Cowboys games. In fact, the only Cowboys games Brady hasn’t called were prime-time games aired by other networks. (Brady will be calling Chiefs-49ers this weekend; mercifully, the Cowboys are on bye.)
The NFL has traditionally sold its Sunday television rights by conference, with Fox getting the NFC and CBS getting the AFC (this is why Tony Romo seems to always be calling Chiefs games). While the NFL has said that it wants to move away from that split, it has yet to do so. If Fox continues to primarily get NFC games, it will continue to assign its no. 1 crew to the NFC’s biggest draw—the Cowboys. So expect to continue to hear Brady’s same thoughts on Prescott recycled over and over.
This is all made more frustrating by the fact that Fox didn’t simply hire Brady to fill a hole in its lineup. The network kicked Greg Olsen out of his spot as its lead color guy. Olsen, who has been calling games on Fox since 2021, has quickly become one of the very best in the broadcast business. He didn’t deserve to get demoted in a move that also reportedly cost him 70 percent of his salary. But with so many guys entrenched in the highest-profile color commentary jobs (Aikman, 57, for Monday Night Football on ESPN; Cris Collinsworth, 65, for Sunday Night Football on NBC; Kirk Herbstreit, 55, for Thursday Night Football on Amazon; Romo, 44, in CBS’s top spot) it’s unclear how Olsen can move back into a no. 1 role. He may be stuck in Fox’s no. 2 spot for quite a while, which is a shame—a year and a half ago he was superb in calling the Super Bowl.
So let’s sum it all up: We have the greenest broadcaster in the business, under intrusive restrictions that no other broadcaster is subject to, often calling the same (boring) team’s games every Sunday. It’s just not a recipe for success.
For what it’s worth, it’s not Brady’s fault that he got the no. 1 job out of the gate. He’s Tom Freaking Brady—not the kind of guy you slowly bring up through the ranks. And Brady, for his part, wasn’t expecting perfection early.
“There’s plenty of things I’m going to screw up,” he told my colleague Bryan Curtis this summer. “It’s live television. But I think that I’m going out there to do my best, … to work as hard as we can to get it perfect, knowing that it will never be perfect.”
Unfortunately, now that Brady is a part owner of an NFL franchise, it will definitely never be perfect.
I don’t even think Brady is bad at this. Actually, I’d say Brady is pretty good, and his calling of the Lions-Cowboys game was his strongest performance to date. Plus it’s been only six weeks—he can and should continue to get better. Unlike Joe Montana and his short-lived broadcasting career, it’s easy to see a future in which Brady is a voice of the sport, calling NFL Sundays for years, if not decades.
But so long as he’s hampered by these restrictions, he’ll never be the best broadcaster he can be. He’ll never be great at this. He’ll certainly never be the greatest. And if you’re getting Brady but not getting great, what is the point?