For now, Brady isn’t addressing his plans. (A Brady representative declined to comment.) But in his conversation with Smith back in August, Brady sounded like someone eager to embark on a long career in television, saying at the time that he was anxious for fans “to see things through my eyes.”
“I get to express it on TV for a lot of years going forward,” he said.
The most successful NFL color commentators have boasted styles and personalities as varied as the positions on a football team. Madden was the jolly everyman whose enthusiasm seeped through the telestrator. Troy Aikman has combined a pleasant drawl with sharp-elbowed commentary to become arguably the best in the business. Greg Olsen, who preceded Brady as Fox’s top NFL analyst, has won plaudits for his on-the-spot analysis and understanding of modern football concepts. There is no one-size-fits-all template for the job, but it is still unclear which one fits Brady.
“I don’t know if Brady has a differentiating characteristic yet,” says Deitsch. “I think that usually comes after a couple of years in the booth.”
Fox first announced Brady for the role in May 2022, when he was preparing to enter what would be his final NFL season. The network had just lost the acclaimed tandem of Aikman and play-by-play announcer Joe Buck to Monday Night Football on ESPN, and responded by hiring the league’s most decorated player. Worth $375 million over 10 years, the deal eclipsed Brady’s career earnings in the NFL and made him the highest-paid sports broadcaster in history before he’d even called a single game.
Brady officially retired from the NFL in 2023, but opted to take a year off before starting at Fox. When the network aired the Super Bowl that winter, Olsen shined in the broadcast, ratcheting up the pressure on Brady to deliver in this year’s game.
“He’s not going to have a disaster broadcast. I think he has too many games already under his belt,” Deitsch says of Brady. “The question will more so be: Will he have a revelatory broadcast the way, a couple of years ago, Greg Olsen [did]? People came away from that Super Bowl like, Wow, Greg Olsen is a legitimate number one, A-chair analyst.”
In the spring of 2023, nearly four months after retiring from football, Brady reached an agreement to purchase a minority stake in the Raiders. Fox reportedly gave its blessing to the arrangement, but it made some NFL owners and executives wary about potential conflicts of interest. The league sought to assuage those concerns in August, when it announced that Brady would face a number of unique restrictions as a broadcaster due to his role as an owner––although, notably, he is not barred from calling Raiders games.
Under the rules, Brady is not permitted to enter another team’s facility, nor is he allowed to observe a team’s practice or attend production meetings. Partaking in those activities, which involve meetings with players and coaches, is standard practice for NFL analysts, providing them with valuable insight to share during the game broadcasts.
“If you talk to any analyst, they will always talk about how important meeting with the teams is before these games,” says Ourand. “I have to believe that it hurts the way that Tom Brady prepares for a game.”
The NFL also said that Brady would be prohibited from publicly criticizing league officials, a rule he appeared to violate during Fox’s broadcast of a November game between the Detroit Lions and the Green Bay Packers. After Lions safety Brian Branch was ejected for a helmet-to-helmet hit, Brady registered his disagreement on air, saying he didn’t “love that call at all.” The NFL later said that Brady didn’t cross the line. “The concern would be if Tom was egregiously critical of officiating or called into question the integrity of an official or the crew,” a league spokesman said at the time.
Deitsch says the restrictions on Brady “do impact viewers” and the way they take in the games.
“That’s just the reality,” Deitsch says. “I just think inevitably you pull some punches with officiating, just because you have to know in the back of your mind that you’re limited in terms of how far you can go. I think you probably hold back on certain things when it comes to other owners in the league, because you’re an owner yourself.”
Fox insists that Brady’s ties to the Raiders have not impacted his performance as a broadcaster, but others aren’t sure it’s sustainable for him to hold both jobs. The longtime sportscaster Dan Patrick called Brady’s dual roles “problematic” in November, and earlier this week, Patrick predicted that Brady would be “one and done” and leave Fox after the Super Bowl.
