Despite questions to the contrary, it appears that Tom Brady will, in fact, be in the broadcast booth for Fox this fall.
Now all that’s left to find out is how good the seven-time Super Bowl champion will be at calling games.
With the start of the 2024 NFL season approaching, Brady has begun to showcase himself as a media personality. And while the 46-year-old has yet to call an actual game, Ryen Russillo saw enough in his recent interview with Colin Cowherd to become bullish on the former New England Patriots quarterback’s prospects as a broadcaster.
“I could tell what Cowherd was doing. He was trying to to try to get Brady to share some of those moments with [Bill] Belichick where they’d be butting heads, that we’ve all read about,” Russillo said on Monday’s episode of The Bill Simmons Podcast. “And Brady, because he’s been doing this such a long time, completely flips it and talks about how great Belichick was on Saturday. And Brady continues to give this awesome answer.
“All this stuff that we’ve seen with Greg Olsen and how great he’s been and how this is such a weird situation because Olsen’s like the best doing it and now he’s going to get replaced — I didn’t know if Brady was just the star attraction that networks absolutely love and love bringing to upfronts and it’s like, ‘We’ve got Brady and we don’t even care what the f***ing number is.’ But some of the stuff that Brady’s doing is he’s sharing these stories in the media. I’m like, ‘This guy might be awesome at this.’ So we’ll see.”
Simmons concurred.
“I agree with you,” Simmons said. “He’s way more candid than I was ever expecting.”
“I think he might be awesome,” Russillo reiterated. “He was so good with Cowherd.”
“It’s possible,” Simmons agreed. “It’s in play.”
Considering that quarterbacks often spend their careers actively avoiding saying anything remotely interesting in front of microphones, it can be difficult to project how they’ll perform in the broadcast booth. For every Tony Romo (who’s polarizing in his own right), there’s a Drew Brees who can’t quite seem to shake decades of the typical (and largely uninteresting) QB speak.
To Russillo’s point, whether it was his appearance on The Herd or even at his own roast, Brady appears to be breaking out of his quarterback shell. And while it’s one thing to do it in a controlled setting like an interview but another to do it amid the chaos of calling an NFL game, if there’s one person who is equipped to handle such situations, it might be the greatest player to have ever played the position.
About Ben Axelrod
Ben Axelrod is a veteran of the sports media landscape, having most recently worked for NBC's Cleveland affiliate, WKYC. Prior to his time in Cleveland, he covered Ohio State football and the Big Ten for outlets including Cox Media Group, Bleacher Report, Scout and Rivals.