The skills that made Brady an all-time great don’t necessarily translate to the booth.
I give Tom Brady one season.
One season in the booth before he leaves to do something else, like look impossibly handsome in the owner’s box of the Raiders. One season before he and FOX devise a graceful exit from his $375 million contract. One season before we recall his broadcasting career as a blip that just didn’t pan out and, oh well, he’s still the greatest quarterback ever/you hate him cuz you ain’t him/insert six-rings meme here.
Brady made a halting debut with FOX’s No. 1 broadcast team over the weekend, earning tepid reviews. “The timing was a bit off,” wrote The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand. Yahoo went with “clunky.” Even RedZone host Scott Hanson admonished Brady in real time to “get more excited” about a potential 71-yard field goal, though he later apologized. Pretty much every appraisal included the word “awkward.”
In the two days since Brady’s underwhelming unveiling, there’s been a rush to cite the start of his playing career. Brady replaced Drew Bledsoe under duress in 2001 and didn’t really look like an NFL quarterback until his third start against the Chargers. We all know how that season ended.
“Brady figured that out and he’ll figure this out, too!” goes the logic, and FOX is surely hoping so, since it has the Super Bowl in February. But we’re glossing over some relevant details.
The skills that made Brady an all-time great don’t necessarily translate to the booth. Broadcasting can’t be brute-forced with a thousand reps in the sun like learning to attack a Cover-4 or throw the perfect man-beater to the back pylon. Just because you can see it doesn’t mean you can explain it, and Brady wouldn’t be the first Hall of Famer to struggle in this regard.
Just ask Magic Johnson, Derek Jeter, or Wayne Gretzky, three athletes synonymous with their respective sports who don’t bring much to the studio. Playing stars turned broadcast stars like Troy Aikman, Charles Barkley, and John McEnroe are the exceptions.
The best broadcasters possess innate charisma, and one drawback to Brady’s carefully cultivated persona is that he spent 20 years meticulously pruning anything resembling a personality. He always said the right thing by mastering the art of not really saying anything. Being the face of a franchise means smoothing any rough edges, but broadcasts demand as much passion as polish.
Brady’s predecessor, former tight end Greg Olsen, intuitively grasped this fact. Olsen quickly shined not only by providing insight, but excitement. His call of Super Bowl 57 between the Chiefs and Eagles was universally praised, from his forceful denouncement of a controversial flag, to his shouts of “He’s gotta get down!” before Jerick McKinnon wisely gave himself up on the 1-yard line in the closing moments.
Brady lacked similar decisiveness on Sunday, and that’s OK. It’s hard to master that art immediately. But Brady’s wooden demeanor is a bigger impediment than his fans are willing to acknowledge, and it’s not a new development. It was on display playing himself in his own movie, for goodness sake.
Brady is the son of regular parents from a regular suburb, but that doesn’t automatically make him relatable. He feels more like a supermodel or A-list actor who spends his time hobnobbing in the Hamptons and would guess that milk only costs, what, $30/gallon? It doesn’t help that he has made some unrelatable choices, from his loyalty to questionable trainer Alex Guerrero to his hawking of concussion juice to his inability to stay retired. His awkward laugh doesn’t exactly scream, “Let’s grab a beer.”
Compare that to his biggest rival. Even though he’s the son of a Pro Bowler and scion of the NFL’s first family, Peyton Manning is blessed with a natural everyman charm. It’s why he not only held his own on Saturday Night Live, but authored the greatest sports-themed sketch in the history of the show. (The United Way. Oh my god, watch it.)
He’s genuinely funny. You can see it in the aftermath of his infamous shouting match with teammate Jeff Saturday, when he sheepishly tells teammate Brandon Stokley, “I’m mic’d up. It was better than Desperate Housewives.”
The ManningCast makes compelling TV because of Peyton. He can predict plays like Tony Romo, but he’s also comfortable unloading on training camp holdout Brandon Aiyuk for dropping a touchdown. “Sign your contract on time and catch that ball,” was Manning’s basic point, and it came naturally. He didn’t learn it after burying his face in a laptop like he’s trying to code The Matrix.
Brady, by contrast, wants to study his way to excellence, as if he’s learning a playbook, a point reinforced by the promo of him debating his younger selves over a life without football before declaring, “Back to work.” That’s an admirable approach that nonetheless misses an important layer of complexity.
It’s not enough to understand the job intellectually. The best game analysts must speak quickly, concisely, and confidently. Some of that is simply innate. Facts don’t always matter as much as delivery.
It’s possible that Brady’s strengths simply don’t play to the booth. His legendarily single-minded focus can come at the expense of humor and self-deprecation. He projects an air of decency, but that’s not the same as interesting.
He may discover that winning Super Bowls is easier than calling them, which is why I’d bet on his second act being a one-and-done.
