Tom Brady eats turducken Screenshot
FoxNFLBy Arthur Weinstein on

There have been legitimate reasons to criticize Tom Brady this season, as the rookie NFL on Fox color analyst has had his share of growing pains.

On Thanksgiving Day, some fans found another excuse to roast Brady — his seeming reluctance to chow down on the traditional turducken that is featured on Fox’s NFL Thanksgiving Day game each year.

Brady and play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt called the Dallas Cowboys-New York Giants game. Someone delivered a turducken to the booth (for those unfamiliar with the traditional Cajun dish, it’s a deboned duck stuffed into a deboned chicken, which is then stuffed into a deboned turkey).

Brady surely knew this moment would come. Legendary NFL broadcaster John Madden helped popularize turducken during Fox’s Thanksgiving broadcasts, with Madden and players eating the dish at games. Given Fox honored the late Madden during Thursday’s broadcast, turducken had to play a key role.

“Here it is Tom Brady, it’s your first official turducken, what do you think?” Burkhardt asked.

“I love it,” Brady said.

“Let’s do it!” Burkhardt said.

“How did a duck and a chicken get roped into this?” Brady asked.

Both Burkhardt and Brady took bites of a leg.

“Oh, that’s good,” Brady said.

“Tur-duck-en,” Burkhardt said.

“That’s really good,” Brady reiterated.

“I’m bailing you guys. Have a good night. This was awesome. By the way, this was awesome,” Brady said.

Now, anyone wondering how that lighthearted moment could possibly turn into a mini-controversy (The New York Post dubbed it “Turducken-gate”) doesn’t understand certain things. Many fans love to criticize Brady, whether they’re mad at him for beating their team all those years as the GOAT quarterback, or upset that he replaced popular Fox analyst Greg Olsen in Fox’s No. 1 booth — or both.

And then there are trolls who are always looking to blow something up on social media.

So of course, “Turducken-gate” became a thing on X. Fans criticized the size of Brady’s bite, speculated he spit it out off camera, and even complained that grabbing just the turkey’s leg is not a true taste of turducken.


A reasonable person might conclude Brady took a big bite of the turkey leg. But on social media, “Turducken-gate” will live on until next year, when Brady gets to take another crack at John Madden’s favorite Thanksgiving dish.

Brady came under more legitimate criticism Thursday. Some complained that the minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders sounded more like a team owner than an impartial analyst in his criticism of former Giants QB Daniel Jones.

And Awful Announcing’s Ben Axelrod wrote a sharply critical piece entitled, “Tom Brady just isn’t a fit for broadcasting.”

[The New York Post]

About Arthur Weinstein

Arthur spends his free time traveling around the U.S. to sporting events, state and national parks, and in search of great restaurants off the beaten path.

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