Even Tom Brady has taken notice as Radio Hall-of-Famer Chris “Mad Dog” Russo continues his career resurgence since joining Stephen A. Smith on First Take.
Earlier this month, Russo was inducted into the National Radio Hall of Fame as part of the Class of 2022. Despite being previously criticized by Mad Dog, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback recently took time out of his own SiriusXM podcast to celebrate Russo’s career.
“Congrats Chris on an amazing career accomplishment,” Brady said on his Let’s Go podcast. “It’s certainly well-deserved, you worked your ass off for a lot of years and it’s nice to see that you’re getting amazing recognition as you so well deserve and thanks for having us on your channel, and let’s keep it going. Good luck.”
Brady joined SiriusXM’s Mad Dog Sports Radio channel last year to launch a weekly show and podcast co-hosted by Jim Gray. While Russo would seemingly be eager to promote having arguably the greatest NFL player of all time on the SiriusXM channel that bears his name, the renowned radio host instead ripped Brady for not sending him a thank you message.
“They’ve been begging me to promote it,” Russo said shortly after Brady joined his SiriusXM channel last year. “When Tom sends me a text saying, ‘Chris it’s great to be on the channel, great to be part of it’ as everybody else does…when I get that (from Brady) then I will promote that show like you wouldn’t believe.”
Earlier this year, Russo again stated his indifference toward having Brady on his channel as a weekly host, telling Stephen A. Smith and Molly Qerim on First Take that he wanted to turn the quarterback down.
“I didn’t make the decision to put him on Mad Dog Radio but he’s on Mad Dog Radio,” Russo said.
While we don’t know whether Brady ever sent Russo that thank you text he so badly wanted, his recent congratulatory comments may have won the Radio Hall-of-Famer over.
“Now I have to be nice to Brady,” Russo noted reluctantly after First Take played the quarterback’s message. “Brady was important…I sent that Brady thing,” he added while wiggling his thumbs to show that he boasted about Brady’s comments via text.
That’s a nice job out of Brady, putting all of Russo’s criticism behind him to fawn over the radio host’s career accomplishments, although I can’t imagine Brady was too aware of Russo’s desire to see the quarterback ousted from his SiriusXM channel.