Well, one thing’s for certain: Tom Brady can B.S. with the best of them.
Guessing you already knew that.
We have no idea what kind of NFL analyst Brady will become, but as a pitchman, no worries. Brady had to participate Monday in the Fox Upfronts, which are sort of broadcast cheerleading sessions for advertisers. He quickly proved that he’s got plenty of flesh-press game.
“I love being part of that Fox family,” Brady schmoozed at one point. “Walking out of my first meeting with Fox, it reminded me of my amazing teammates. To be part of the game I love, to be part of the greatest telecast in football every single week, ultimately made my decision.”
So a Fox programming meeting = Super Bowl winning rosters. Hoo boy. But you see where this is going, and so does Brady: Right to the bank, thanks to a 10-year contract with Fox worth a reported $375 million.
More interesting was the news of Brady’s first assignment. Fox was given the Cowboys-Browns game in the late afternoon window on Sept. 8, with CBS assigned no corresponding contest. (The league and networks have been dripping out these game announcements all week.) That’s a huge early win for Fox, which would’ve done fine with either Brady’s debut in the booth or a national telecast involving the Cowboys, but now gets both.
Brady will be working with Kevin Burkhardt on Fox’s No. 1 announcing team, which makes it at least semi-official that Greg Olsen will have a new role. Olsen has already said as much, though it still seemed to sneak up on some people that he didn’t become a free agent after the 2023-24 NFL season ended and the Brady takeover went into effect.
Olsen said he remains bound to Fox, telling the Charlotte Observer in March, “Still under contract with them. Still get to call some of the best games of the NFL slate.”
What that will look like isn’t entirely clear, and there’s no broadcast universe in which getting bumped from the No. 1 team doesn’t also involve a financial haircut. But Olsen will be fine. He’s really good, and he received strong reviews for his two seasons alongside Burkhardt. There may not be a top job up for grabs right now, but when the time comes, Olsen will be there to take it.
About Brady, there’s just way less known. The game-prep for which he was known as a quarterback certainly won’t hurt him here, but it’s still to be seen which of Brady’s personality traits will come across most powerfully when he’s working four quarters from upstairs.
And the math is different for Brady. It just is. Olsen was a fine, fine football player; Brady is football royalty. What he says and how he says it are going to be scrutinized more closely, probed at greater depth for cues and clues, than virtually anyone else who might settle into that role.
Folks will be trying to crack the T.B. code to figure out whether he’s tossing roses or darts. It’ll be a little Swiftian – maybe only for a while, but at least for that long.
The Upfronts didn’t generate much of that kind of curiosity, but they’re not supposed to. You can’t trust these events; they’re put-ons to get the big media buyers excited about a network’s programming plans for the coming ratings season. It’s show-pony stuff. All Brady proved Monday was that he knows how corporate money moves.
He stood around swapping scripted jokes with Michael Strahan. He listened while Erin Andrews described him as “one of the best storytellers out there” – about which, we’ll see – and he was part of the big finish, when celeb chef Gordon Ramsey, Strahan and Brady gathered together to shout to the advertisers, “Let’s f—ing go!”
Again – nobody’s fault. That’s what the Upfronts are for, and I think we already knew that the seven-time Super Bowl winning QB understands how to handle a moment of public enthusiasm.
But you can’t blame the media buyers, much less the fans, if they’re looking forward to seeing which of the Tom Bradys they’ll get when the games are live and the calls are real. Can’t wait to find out.
Mark Kreidler is a national award-winning writer whose work has appeared at ESPN, the New York Times, Washington Post, Time, Newsweek and dozens of other publications. He’s also a sports-talk veteran with stops in San Francisco and Sacramento, and the author of three books, including the bestselling “Four Days to Glory.” More of his writing can be found at https://markkreidler.substack.com. He is also reachable on Twitter @MarkKreidler.
