After roughly a year and a half of speculation regarding whether Tom Brady would ever work a game as Fox’s lead in-game analyst, the living legend is on track to make his regular-season announcing debut for the Week 1 contest between the Dallas Cowboys and Cleveland Browns on Sept. 8.
For a piece published Thursday, media insider Richard Deitsch of The Athletic previewed how Brady will perform in his new role.
“Those working with him — Fox is running a very tight ship regarding going on the record about Brady — said he’s fully invested in becoming a good broadcaster,” Deitsch shared. “He’s funny, occasionally profane, and comes off like a normal person with a not-so-normal career and life. His crew has already done practice games in Santa Clara and L.A., and Brady has been on a fact-finding mission about broadcasting for months. Both Tony Romo and Jim Nantz told The Athletic earlier this year that they speak with Brady often.”
Along with Romo and Nantz, Brady has spoken with other noteworthy media personalities such as Joe Buck and Troy Aikman about making the move into the booth. The seven-time Super Bowl champion also spent portions of last season studying for upcoming Fox assignments.
Jimmy Traina of Sports Illustrated wrote earlier this week that he feels Brady “will be GREAT as Fox’s lead NFL analyst,” in part because the future Hall of Famer has been “blunt and honest” while speaking about football-related topics during interviews and episodes of his “Let’s Go!” SiriusXM show. Deitsch seems to agree with Traina’s take.
“My initial thoughts on Brady before hearing him: I think he’s going to better at this than you might expect,” Deitsch continued. “He’s a football obsessive, and this usually leads to interesting broadcasters.”
Interestingly, Deitsch repeated his previous prediction and said he “would bet nearly everything I have that [Brady] won’t complete his 10-year deal with Fox” said to be worth $375M because the 47-year-old has “always struck me as someone with greater ambition than broadcasting.” If it’s true that concerns related to Brady serving as both a commentator for Fox and as a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders have been resolved, there’s no reason to believe that the seven-time Super Bowl champion will have second thoughts about working for the network anytime soon.
