As many weigh in on the debut of Tom Brady as a FOX Sports football analyst alongside Kevin Burkhardt, Gregg Giannotti and Boomer Esiason gave their thoughts. This morning on WFAN’s Boomer & Gio, Giannotti did not hold anything back in his assessment of how Brady did as he started his 10-year $375 million deal with the company.
“It’s his first broadcast, obviously there was a lot of practice that went into it for him. I didn’t think he was any good. I really do like Tom Brady, I’ve always been a huge fan of his. I want him to succeed generally at everything he does, but he was bad in his first broadcast. Doesn’t mean he can’t get better but to me it was bad.”
Giannotti and Esiason talked about something many have brought up, which is Brady’s voice did not sound very powerful, many saying it came out with a higher pitch than people were expecting.
“His voice wasn’t cutting through,” Giannotti said. “He didn’t say anything, to me, that wasn’t obvious. And he had a real tough time completing sentences without stopping in the middle of them which was weird. He would just go and then boom he’d be making a point that it’d be like silence and you’re like, ‘wait a second he can’t just stop there’ and he did and then he picked it up again and he was also doing the thing that I hear a lot of people do when they first start getting on the air which is ending their sentences with ‘so’ because they don’t know how to deal with a pregnant pause. It just sounded like a kid at a college radio station, he’s got a long way to go.”
Esiason thought Brady got better as the game went on. “I thought he got a little bit better, but he didn’t have a very good game to do,” he said. “Where I want to really hear his expertise is at the end of the first half and at the end of the second half in a very close game when it comes down to decision-making in regard to the coaches…And you know quite frankly they have to get used to each other. I think Kevin Burkhardt tried really hard to engage him, to sort of interview him…it’s gonna take a while for us as fans to get used to his voice. They’re gonna have to pump up the volume so you can hear him a little bit more clearly and he’s going to have to understand, it took Troy and Joe years to become the booth that they are. They’re friends and it’s like two friends doing a game together, that relaxed nature of doing the game.
“He was a little uptight yesterday, a little nervous. I’m sure he knows everybody was listening he knew that the slate was cleared because they were the only one that had a doubleheader and that was to promote him. And then you saw him in a commercial, that’s part of the $375 million deal that he received. And by the way, he got paid for what he did on the field and what he did on the field was extraordinary and that’s why he got paid. So now he’s gonna have to deal with the slings and arrows that come when you get into that booth, because that booth is like a washer on spin, and they’re gonna be people like that like you and people that hate you and he’s just gonna have to deal with it.”
Giannotti then gave a specific example of where he thought Brady came up short. Several people had wondered if Brady would be too soft on players and not criticize guys he spent time in the league with or ones he was teammates with. In this game, Gio thought Brady would be a bit more critical of Cleveland quarterback Deshaun Watson.
“I was hoping that he would criticize Deshaun Watson more than he did,” Giannotti said. “So, I’m thinking all right if you don’t criticize Deshaun Watson playing like this when it’s Deshaun Watson, who are you gonna criticize? Because criticizing Deshaun Watson is a layup. They traded away all those first-round picks, he got an insane guaranteed deal, he’s a pervert and he sucks, so like that’s the easiest guy in the world to criticize and he didn’t even come near criticizing him.”
