Tom Brady will call his first Super Bowl with Kevin Burkhardt for Fox Sports on Sunday. And while much has been made over Brady replacing Greg Olsen as the network’s lead analyst… what if they worked together?
Twenty years ago, the Fox Super Bowl broadcast booth in 2005 had a different look — Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, and Cris Collinsworth called the Eagles-Patriots in Jacksonville a three-man team.
The three-man booth hasn’t returned to the sport’s biggest stage since. Not because the trio didn’t work — they meshed well — but because Collinsworth soon returned to NBC. It was a short-lived experiment, yet one that left its mark on Fox’s No. 1 team.
While the former Bengals wide receiver was ultimately missed, his departure didn’t stop Buck and Aikman from becoming one of the most beloved duos in the league. Now, they hold the title of the longest-tenured broadcast crew in NFL history.
But their exit from Fox created opportunities — first for Greg Olsen, then for Tom Brady. With Olsen a master of his craft and a fan favorite at that, Fox had a real chance to revive the three-man booth nearly two decades later. Given Brady’s uneven first season and Olsen’s frustration with his reduced role, it could have been the perfect compromise — one Olsen was open to. There’s a reason Awful Announcing’s readers voted him and Joe Davis as the top announcing crew in the sport.
Instead, Fox stuck to its $375 million plan. And now, as Olsen fights to reclaim a spot on the biggest stage, it’s clear that the network may have fumbled an opportunity of its own.
But would it have even worked?
Greg Olsen wasn’t opposed to the idea, but as Tom Brady might say, we never truly got into the “red area.”
After Olsen delivered on the biggest stage, and with lingering uncertainty over whether Brady would actually follow through on his commitment, Olsen kept the chair warm. He spent two seasons as Fox’s lead NFL analyst, all while knowing it was likely temporary with Brady waiting in the wings. Yet there was one possible path for Olsen to remain part of Fox’s top crew: a three-man booth.
Speaking to Barrett Media’s Derek Futterman last August, Olsen admitted he would have considered joining Brady and Burkhardt in the booth, though it doesn’t appear the network ever gave the idea serious thought.
“I think that’s a conversation that if it was something that was even on the table, we would have definitely leaned into and considered and talked through what the mechanics and the situation of that look like,” Olsen said. “I’m not one to just close doors without at least knowing what’s behind them. So yeah, that’s not something I would have been opposed to by any stretch. It was never worth much consideration because it was never really a possibility.”
It was never a possibility.
Some outside the network wondered if Fox should have reconsidered after Olsen earned rave reviews for his Super Bowl LVII call and two strong seasons as the network’s lead analyst. But a second analyst shouldn’t be necessary when you’re paying Brady $375 million to be the face of your coverage. If anything, a three-man booth might have made it even tougher for Brady to break through the chemistry Olsen and Burkhardt had already built.
But according to those like Peter King, another factor was at play. The longtime columnist for Sports Illustrated and later NBC Sports shut down the idea from the start, explaining why the dream of a three-man Fox booth featuring Brady, Olsen and Burkhardt was never realistic.
Because of the salary gap between the two retired NFL stars—and the fact that Olsen is already so highly regarded—King argued that a three-man booth could risk embarrassing Brady.
And the dream of a three-man booth died then.
Fox would do a lot of things. Embarrassing the greatest quarterback of all time? Not one of them.
“Brady obviously is making whatever it is, $37 million, and it would kind of seem absurd that the guy who everybody right now thinks is one of the best, or the best (Olsen), making a quarter of what the big star is making and outshining him in the booth,” King explained. “It would just seem pretty weird to me.”
But this conversation is back at the forefront because Greg Olsen used the week before the Super Bowl to air some grievances. He knew what he was signing up for with Fox—keeping Brady’s seat warm — but that doesn’t mean he has to be happy about it. He dreams of calling top games, and if that has to be a Super Bowl on another network, so be it. He also sent a message to Fox management about his demotion, saying: “It’s pretty clear that the path, the upward trajectory as far as Fox goes, probably is a non-factor.”
It didn’t have to be this way.
Greg Olsen won’t say it outright, but the writing is on the wall—his future as a top analyst likely isn’t at Fox. He proved he could handle the biggest stage, only to be cast aside for the network’s $375 million investment. That’s business, but it doesn’t make it right.
But what if Brady falls short of Olsen on the Super Bowl stage, and their former analyst becomes more vocal about how he deserved to stay in the role? It’s a nightmare scenario for the network. There’s no easy way to pivot from sports media history’s most expensive analyst deal. Olsen, meanwhile, won’t sit around waiting for a redemption arc that may never come. He’s too good, too respected and too ambitious to be a backup plan.
Fox had a chance to make it work. Instead, it made its choice. And we will never know what could have happened had Greg Olsen and Tom Brady shared the broadcast booth together.
