As Tom Brady prepares to call the first Super Bowl of his broadcasting career for Fox, he received some advice from Al Michaels, who called the game 11 times.
Brady spent part of his gap year between playing and broadcasting by reaching out to select media members for advice on how to make a successful transition. Ahead of his first Super Bowl broadcast this weekend, Richard Deitsch of The Athletic took care of the grunt work by reaching out to a group of broadcasters, including Al Michaels, to collect advice for Brady.
“I think he’ll feel much the way he did when he played. He’ll be ready to go and can’t wait for the buildup to end and for the game to start,” Michaels told Deitsch. “Once he gets going, he’ll settle in and get into that comfort zone. … The platform will be his biggest, but the game will take him where he needs to go as a broadcaster.”
“Maybe in the commercial breaks, lean back once in a while and savor the moment,” Michaels added. “That’s something he couldn’t do as a player. It’s exhilarating, so try to soak it all in.”
Michaels, who thought Brady’s Fox debut was “terrific,” called his first Super Bowl in 1988 alongside Frank Gifford and Dan Dierdorf, a 42-10 blowout win for Washington over the Denver Broncos. The iconic play-by-play voice went on to call 10 more Super Bowls in his career.
Similarly, this is Brady’s 11th Super Bowl, although it’s his first as a broadcaster after achieving a 7-3 record in the game as a player. It might seem silly to think about Brady having nerves ahead of broadcasting a Super Bowl after quarterbacking the game ten times. But playing football in front of an audience of more than 100 million people is a much more familiar spot for Brady to be in than talking about it on live TV.
