Greg Olsen knows he wants to be in the broadcast booth to call top NFL games. He just doesn’t know where that’s going to be yet.
Olsen joined The Dan Patrick Show Wednesday morning to preview the Super Bowl and the conversation eventually made its way to the awkwardness of Fox’s lead NFL analyst getting bumped from his chair by Tom Brady next season. Brady’s looming presence might be career altering for Olsen, but it won’t alter his career goals.
“I want to call top game. I want to call games in front of 57 million people, and dive into the biggest moments… And I feel like we’ve done as good a job at doing that as anyone in the industry over the last couple seasons.”
–@GregOlsen88 on his future in broadcasting pic.twitter.com/tu2nKzTLGC
— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) January 31, 2024
“I want to call top games,” Olsen told Patrick. “I’ve known Tom was coming for two years…that part of it we always knew, it was a matter of when…But going forward, my goals haven’t changed. My goal when I started out calling games with Fox three years ago was, I aspired to be a top broadcaster, I really thought I could do it.”
“I thought if given the opportunity and the chance I could show people that I could do it and I got the opportunity and Fox was kind enough to give me that. I think over the last two years, we’ve really changed the narrative. We’ve changed where, ‘This is just a placeholder’ to, ‘This guy can do it.’
“My goals and aspirations, if anything, have even gotten more committed to I want to call top games. I want to call games in front of 57 million people and dive into the biggest moments…where that is, how that is, when that is, I don’t know. There are so many moving parts out of my control. But my goal is to be a top A broadcaster again. I’m gonna do everything in my power to achieve that.”
Olsen will do everything in his power to achieve that, but he won’t make demands to Fox. Patrick asked Olsen if he thought about asking Fox for a trade to another network, and while his agent might feel differently, the NFL analyst seems intent on letting things play out organically, at least for now.
“I’m not really in the business of making demands,” Olsen said. “I’m not holding anybody’s feet to the fire. Fox understands the position I’m in. They understand what my aspirations are. We’re not sitting there banging the table saying, ‘You have to let us…’ we’re not doing that. We understand what we signed up for.
“They understand where I am and being at this stage of my career of where I want to go. We understand the delicate situation that we’re in. I understand when Tom Brady’s looming over your shoulder it’s the biggest news in sports. I get it…I feel like we’ve handled it as well as we could for the last two years and if I could get another opportunity to call top games at Fox or somewhere else, we’ll cross that bridge when we get there.”
At the end of the interview, Patrick commended Olsen for doing a great job in the midst of having to answer questions about Tom Brady in every interview he’s done over the course of the last two years or so. And Patrick is right, Olsen was put into an awkward situation by Brady and Fox, but continues to answer every question with class, which has only added to his fanfare. But Patrick also offered the advice that second place isn’t always a bad thing.
“There’s no shame if you’re calling the second-best games on Fox,” Patrick told Olsen. “You’re still doing it for a living and that’s really important. But wanting to be better, greater, that’s the important part.”
You’re still doing it for a living, you’re just doing it for a lot less of a living. According to Andrew Marchand, now of The Athletic, Olsen is set to endure a $7 million pay cut with Brady bumping him to the No. 2 booth.
That’s a big pay cut to take, especially after you crushed it at your job for two years. But one thing is clear after Olsen’s last two seasons as Fox’s lead NFL analyst: he still wants to call top games, and the fans still want him calling top games.
