We’re nearly two months into the first season watching Tom Brady as an NFL announcer.
The seven-time Super Bowl champion has gotten a lot better, but even he knows he still has a long way to go.
In the latest edition of his vlog series Last Week, Brady described how he is trying to slow down a little in the Fox booth and focus on bringing the audience more of what it wants to hear.
“I’m feeling better than after Week 1,” Brady chuckled. “I think in the end, I’m trying to understand what the audience really likes … educating a little, having a lot of fun, and then telling some fun stories.”
When it comes to those “fun stories,” Brady got more positive attention this week after calling Kansas City Chiefs defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo “the bane of my existence” after competing against “Spags” in three Super Bowls.
But as The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand noted in his review of Brady’s biggest assignment yet in Week 7 as the San Francisco 49ers hosted the Kansas City Chiefs in a Super Bowl rematch, the GOAT’s mind still wanders as a broadcaster. Brady needed play-by-play partner Kevin Burkhardt to refocus him on a stellar throw by Chiefs star Patrick Mahomes after Brady instead highlighted the catch by a backup tight end.
Always a great teammate as an athlete, Brady gave kudos to Burkhardt and the whole Fox crew in the vlog.
“I got the best partner in the whole world in Kevin … they do such a great job kind of facilitating all of it, so what a fun journey it’s been,” he said. “It’s gone really f***ing fast, that’s for sure.”
Buoyed by the Chiefs-49ers clash of titans in Week 7, Fox’s viewership is the highest it’s been since 2016. It’s impossible to isolate any potential Brady Effect from those numbers, but people are tuning in with Brady as the network’s new top analyst.
Fox execs must be encouraged by Brady’s improvement as a broadcaster headed toward a Super Bowl next year. But as Brady enters a new era as a Las Vegas Raiders part-owner and continues to tease a return to the NFL, nobody quite knows whether Fox will be able to see those improvements pay off for the remainder of the record 10-year contract they gave Brady.
[Tom Brady on YouTube]
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.