Skip Bayless is ready to mute Tom Brady: ‘The more I listen…the worse he gets’

Skip Bayless is trying to figure out why he can’t tolerate listening to Tom Brady call NFL games, and he thinks he has the answer.

Brady is fine as a broadcaster. It’s year two of his deal with Fox, and we can say with confidence that he’s not Jason Witten and he’ll never grow into being John Madden. But he’s a serviceable analyst and probably an even better ambassador for Fox.

There should still be an expectation that Brady can continue to improve as a broadcaster. Brady has experienced plenty of growing pains on and off the air as a broadcaster, and by his own admission, he even regressed as an analyst last season. But Skip Bayless doesn’t see any room for improvement. Because the more Skip listens to Brady, the less he can tolerate it.

“The more I listen to Brady as a broadcaster, the worse he gets,” Bayless said on a recent episode of his podcast. “And I’ve never seen a time when a network felt compelled to actually advertise the commentator during the game he’s commentating on.”

Fox hasn’t done Brady any favors by hyping him up the way it has. If anything, Fox has assisted in creating unattainable expectations for their $375 million broadcaster. And despite the pomp and circumstance, Bayless believes Brady pales in comparison to Cris Collinsworth, Troy Aikman, and Tony Romo.

“Tom never tells me anything that I say, ‘Oh, I didn’t think of that.’ Tony Romo, always. Tony Romo takes stands,” Bayless said. “Tom can’t say anything bad. You cannot, as an owner, criticize anything on the football field. Not referees, not players, not coaches, cannot criticize. So, it just vanillas you out. Tony takes stands constantly; the other day, he just took stand after stand.

“Tom’s not gonna tell you that. He’s not gonna take any stands. He’s just gonna say what’s happening. He’s just gonna sort of repeat what’s happening that you can already see. With no real wisdom or evaluation or insight or analysis, you just don’t get it from Tom.”

While Brady is technically restricted from being critical of other teams or referees because of his ownership stake in the Raiders, the ground rules around those restrictions are murky. And despite those restrictions, we have seen Brady criticize players, teams, and referees from the broadcast booth, with the NFL since clarifying that he won’t face discipline for those criticisms unless he is “egregiously critical.”

But now that Bayless has explained what he doesn’t like about Brady as a broadcaster, you’re probably on the edge of your seat wondering why the seven-time Super Bowl champion has been a disappointment in the booth.

“I’m starting to think that Tom Brady and Michael Jordan also share a post-career quality, which is, they just can’t tell you exactly how and why they were so great,” Bayless concluded. “Remember, I said that the next time you listen to Tom Brady or watch Tom Brady call a football game. I just can’t listen anymore. I’m to the point I’m turning down the sound.”

That doesn’t bode well for Jordan as he gets set to begin his first season as a broadcaster for NBC in some unknown capacity. Jordan better quickly figure out how to tell you why he was so great, otherwise he might fall victim to Skip’s mute button the same way Brady has.