Dan Orlovsky finally shed the label of being the guy who ran out of the endzone to take on the label of being the analyst who said Joe Montana isn’t a top-five NFL quarterback.
After Tom Brady retired from the NFL last week, Orlovsky went on First Take and listed his top-five quarterbacks of all-time. Orlovsky shockingly snubbed Montana from that list and it’s something that’s going to follow him throughout the rest of his career as an analyst.
Credit Orlovsky for knowing how to play the game on First Take, issuing a hot take to spark reaction. But usually, no matter how egregious the take is, you try to have at least a few people on your side. Orlovsky, however, is struggling to find anyone who agrees Joe Montana wasn’t a top-five quarterback.
Orlovsky recently joined The Dan Patrick Show and was asked to give broadcasting advice to Tom Brady, who is slated to join Fox as their lead NFL analyst in the fall of 2024.
Is @JoeMontana a top-five quarterback of all time? @danorlovsky7 isn’t so sure. pic.twitter.com/OTtHcEJ25H
— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) February 8, 2023
“Your opinion is always wrong, and it should be,” Orlovsky said. “We live in this world where people get so caught up on opinion and analysis, your opinion should be wrong. When you have an opinion, as long as you justify your opinion, you want people to disagree with your opinion. That’s part of this job. You should strive to have your analysis be accurate.”
Patrick immediately cited Orlovsky’s egregiously wrong take that Joe Montana isn’t a top-five quarterback and was confused by the separation of analysis and opinion.
“What’s the difference of your opinion and your analysis because your analysis should form your opinion,” Patrick argued. “You should have analysis to go along with something like that because, if it’s a standalone opinion, I’m dying to know what the analysis is that would be attached to that.”
Orlovsky said analysis is more scientific than opinion. As much as I don’t understand Orlovsky snubbing Montana on his top-five quarterbacks of all-time list, I don’t understand the blanket “your opinion should be wrong” statement even more. Your opinion should be argued and thought-provoking. But flat out wrong? That’s an interesting mindset for an analyst to take. To Orlovsky’s credit, he is one of the more entertaining analysts on ESPN, partially because he’s good at breaking down film, and partially because he’s a little quirky.
Brady is taking a gap year to prepare for his upcoming gig as a lead NFL analyst for Fox, so he has time to toy and experiment with Orlovsky’s advice before deciding whether or not to implement it. There are a lot of people who are skeptical about Brady’s ability to be interesting with a microphone in front of him. Using the methodology of broadcasting wrong opinions would certainly be interesting, at least for a minute.
