When Tom Brady became a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, the game changed for him as an NFL on Fox announcer.
While Brady hasn’t exactly taken the sports media world by storm with his work in the broadcast booth, he’s shown a real desire to get better and improve his craft. However, his part ownership of the Raiders isn’t helping matters given the severe broadcast restrictions placed on him.
While much of the focus was on his inability to visit team facilities and have conversations with coaches and players, the most peculiar restriction that was publicly known was that Brady could not criticize league officials or other clubs. While that was fairly nebulous, there was plenty of speculation as to what it meant and just how critical Brady could be in the broadcast booth for something like a blown call.
As it played out this weekend, we finally got our answer. Somewhat.
Brady questioned the ejection of Lions defender Brian Branch on Sunday saying he disagreed with the call. Did that cross the line where the NFL was concerned? And if it didn’t… where is the line exactly?
Well, the NFL finally shed some light on what exactly that meant as VP of Communications Brian McCarthy talked to Ben Fischer at Sports Business Journal. And what Tom Brady is not allowed to do is be “egregiously critical” of referees or call their integrity into question.
“The concern would be if Tom was egregiously critical of officiating or called into question the integrity of an official or the crew,” McCarthy told SBJ today. “That did not occur in this instance.”
That makes a bit more sense, especially when it comes to questioning the integrity of officials. In reality, no NFL broadcaster is going to do that because if an announcer was making Tim Donaghy accusations, it would become an international incident where the NFL is concerned and that person would likely be asked to never step foot in an NFL stadium again.
The “egregiously critical” boundary should give Brady a wide enough playing field to do his normal job as an announcer, but it’s still a question as to what exactly that means. Your definition and mine and the NFL’s definition of “egregiously critical” probably varies. Perhaps it fits the classic criteria of “you know it when you see it.”
So don’t expect Tom Brady to call out referees by name like MLB announcers have done with Angel Hernandez over the years. But it’s good to know he can function somewhat normally as an announcer at least while he’s on the call.
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