Tom Brady made his much-anticipated debut for FOX Sports Sunday, and Dan Patrick wasn’t convinced the Super Bowl winner will be at the top of the TV game soon.
During The Dan Patrick Show Monday, the longtime host argued that Tom Brady has a long history with football, but needs to quickly pick up on the intricacies of television to have any chance of success.
“Tom Brady knows football. He has to know television. He has to understand TV. He didn’t understand TV yesterday,” said Patrick, “the timing of it, and he’s used to people asking him questions. People don’t ask you questions necessarily when you’re doing a game. You’ve got to react to that. Now, Kevin Burkhardt may ask him a question and probably has to ask him a few more questions to get him in conversational mode. But there were pauses. His cadence wasn’t smooth. There was very little synchronicity.
“He needed to be more of at the line of scrimmage, as if he’s quarterbacking. He was back as if he was the third-string quarterback. You got to be in it upfront, you got to be attacking, you got to see everything. Now that’s fixable. He’s got to understand you have to be aggressive.”
Patrick continued by noting that — for essentially a quarter of a century — Tom Brady hasn’t wanted people to know what he really thinks, feels, and believes. He needs to change that in his new role for FOX Sports.
“You have to see it, say it, get out … React. Don’t be afraid to say, ‘What is Deshaun Watson doing? What’s Cleveland doing? What’s their game plan?’ You have to do that. And he, for 25 years, goes to a press conference and doesn’t want to tell you something. Now you have to go to a game and you have to tell us something. What is it you see that we wouldn’t see? That’s what I want from Tom Brady.”
Dan Patrick believes Tom Brady has the ability and interest in improving, but believes that will only happen with time.
“You can simulate these games, he can practice broadcasting, but it doesn’t matter, because you never know what’s happening in a game until you’re in that moment. And then what do you do? He’s going to go back and listen to this, and he’s going to realize that there were moments like that where he’s sort of pausing. You got to go get it. You got to attack, because if you don’t, then there’s going to be some dead air … He’s got to fill in all of that. I’m not saying go be (Tony) Romo. But I’m saying you got to tell me something that I go, ‘I’ll be damned. I never would have seen that.’ That’s what I want out of Tom Brady. He knows football. He has to understand TV.”
