As Tom Brady’s playing career winds down, he believes his looming transition to Fox and the broadcast booth will echo the feeling of preparing for games with an NFL team. Just not without growing pains.
Brady joined the Dan Patrick Show for an interview Wednesday morning. (Actually, the interview took place on Tuesday, but it aired Wednesday.) It wasn’t Patrick’s best performance, but before airing the prerecord, the radio host acknowledged he was only allowed 10 minutes with Brady. The interview ended up going 12 minutes, but a portion of that was allotted for Brady to discuss being the face of Hertz and promoting the company’s deal with Tesla.
But Patrick did get to ask Brady at least one question about his surprising decision to become a broadcast analyst upon his eventual retirement from the field.
Patrick noted Drew Brees’ brief tenure with NBC, believing that being a studio analyst is too difficult of a transition for a quarterback who’s coming directly off the field. According to Patrick, being in the booth offers quarterbacks the familiar feeling of preparing for a game, which Brady didn’t disagree.
“I’ve been in every production meeting for 22 years since I started playing in 2001,” Brady said. “I know what those guys are asking, I know what they’re asked to do and I think it feels very much like a team that goes on the road to prepare for a game.”
Tom Brady tells Dan Patrick he expects "a lot of growing pains" as as broadcaster pic.twitter.com/viagokc7yS
— Brandon Contes (@BrandonContes) June 15, 2022
Prior to the announcement by Fox, no one ever viewed Brady as a future broadcaster. His public personality is rather bland, the travel for a broadcaster can be grueling, and as arguably the greatest quarterback in NFL history, Brady always seemed above sitting in the booth every Sunday. And despite landing a historic contract from Fox to join their lead NFL broadcast booth, Brady doesn’t assume he’ll be a perfect fit from the start.
“There’s a lot of learning curve; obviously, it will be a totally new career,” the 44-year-old quarterback said. “It’s a new opportunity for me to try something that I’m going to work really hard to prepare to be as good as I possibly can be, knowing that the day I walk on the set for the first time won’t be my finest moment. There’ll be a lot of growing pains, and I’ll have to learn to be really good at it.”
Hopefully Fox is aware that there will be “a lot of growing pains” for the analyst they just agreed to give $375 million to over ten years. Obviously you expect Brady to progress as an analyst and TV talent over time, but at more than $37 million per season, Brady better at least be “really good at it” from his first kick off.
NBC didn’t seem keen on developing Brees through his growing pains, and ESPN certainly wasn’t prepared to wait for Jason Witten to battle through his either. But after making a $375 million commitment, Fox won’t have the luxury of easily moving on if Brady doesn’t seem immediately ready to be a lead analyst.
