Bill Simmons has every reason to love Tom Brady in the Fox broadcast booth.
As the legendary quarterback of the New England Patriots, Brady joined the NFL on Fox team with a huge advantage in the hearts and minds of fans like the Boston Sports Guy and others in New England and around the country.
But two months into the NFL season, Simmons has seen enough of Brady as an announcer to make the call: It’s not working.
“I thought Brady was just bad today,” Simmons said Sunday night on The Bill Simmons Podcast after Brady called Lions-Vikings for Fox. “He just doesn’t tell me enough.”
After his Sunday night podcast partner “Cousin Sal” Iacono blamed the people around Brady for his slow start in the booth, Simmons agreed.
“I think he’s being poorly produced, is where I’ve landed,” Simmons said. “Because I think whatever they’re telling him to do, it’s not working. I don’t feel like I’m watching the game with him. He comes in in the beginning, he’s got this fake energy … none of it feels genuine to me.”
Still, Simmons is hopeful there is still a great broadcaster buried somewhere within Brady. But if the hope is that an all-time great QB can improve over time, Simmons isn’t seeing that with the seven-time Super Bowl champion.
“I know it’s in there, and they just have not unlocked it, and I think they really have to figure it out,” Simmons added. “He seemed super over-prepared for me … I don’t think he’s good at it. Now we’ve had nine weeks, and I feel like he’s gotten worse than he was four, five weeks ago. Now it’s like he’s gotten too many notes. But when we get to the playoffs and there’s only one game on, it’s going to be pretty glaring when we’re watching all these other playoff games.”
Rather than just piling on Brady, Simmons did provide some advice. The Ringer founder wants to see Brady simplify his approach and be put in position to succeed by Fox producers.
“I really think they need to hit the reset button, clear the cache, start over, and just be like, ‘we overloaded you with too much stuff,'” Simmons explained. “Get back to the basics. Just watch the game with (Kevin) Burkhardt, tell us what you see, come into the game with five, six things that you know you want to hit.”
Simmons also suggested a “curious” third person in the booth to play off Brady and take the burden off the former Patriot and Buccaneer to fill every second of dead air throughout the whole game.
Unfortunately for Fox viewers, Simmons does not expect things to get better.
“He needs something to loosen himself up,” Simmons said. “But they’re not going to do it, because they don’t want to admit defeat and he’s [calling] the Super Bowl and they’re paying him this crazy number.”
Fox signed Brady to a 10-year, $375 million contract in 2022 after he retired from the NFL. The network demoted the promising young broadcaster Greg Olsen to its No. 2 team even after he called a Super Bowl to make space for Brady alongside Burkhardt.
So before it broadcasts another Super Bowl in 2025, Fox basically has no choice but to hope Brady organically improves during the remainder of the NFL regular season.
