WHY DID FOX GIVE $375 MILLION TO TOM BRADY AS THE WORST ANALYST EVER?
It’s not too late to try another roast, where at least everyone was awake, and a Murdoch-run TV network will regret giving insane money to a quarterback who still would rather play than comment
Somewhere in phony utopia, Rupert Murdoch might be asking: “Who is responsible for giving a $375 million contract to Tom Brady?” That would be his son, Lachlan, and the CEO of Fox Sports, Eric Shanks. Outside the studios on Pico Boulevard and Avenue of the Stars, a photo shows Brady standing above broadcast partners Kevin Burkhardt, Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi, who are sitting in a Los Angeles haze.
Is it possible he won’t make it to a second year of punishment and pain? That the Murdochs won’t pay a laughable deal that grossly mocks Trump-adoring souls at Fox News, which thinks it is responsible for electing the next U.S. President? What, $7 million for Greg Gutfeld and $37.5 million for Brady?
He won seven Super Bowls in pro football. He might be the worst sports analyst of all time. Will he leave and try another roast, where at least everyone was awake?
Doesn’t Fox realize, at this point, that fans will watch NFL games regardless of who is in the booth? They support teams. They gamble. They’ll take anyone who is garbling. If Brady walks away following the Super Bowl in February, no one will care except his accountant and if he’s involved in a cohabitating relationship. Would I have watched the Dallas Cowboys and their newly minted quarterback, Dak Prescott, play the Cleveland Browns if Tom was teamed with Jerry in a cartoon? Yes, and I would have if Tom was Brookshier or Mees or Hammond or Luginbill or Rinaldi or Brennaman.
Instead, I had to sit through his first broadcast appearance Sunday, which might be compared to pick No. 199 making his NFL debut in 2000. The difference being: He made a base salary of $193,000, which amounts to a pre-game sneeze in today’s ridiculous TV economics. How boring was Brady? The host of the NFL’s RedZone program ripped him for lacking enthusiasm when the Cowboys, for a moment, trotted out placekicker Brandon Aubrey to try a 71-yard field goal.
“Oh come on! Brady’s gotta get more excited than that in the booth,” Scott Hanson roared from a league studio.
The apology came hours later. “That was unfair & inconsiderate by me. Yes, I was saying it tongue in cheek — but I didn’t calculate how it may come across. @TomBrady, I apologize,” Hanson wrote. “I promise I am rooting you on in this new venture.”
No one else is apologizing, including readers of the Boston Globe, which chronicled his magnificent playing career yet jolted him in today’s editions. Above a headline that said Brady “drew an overload of snark — showed he has a lot to learn before he calls the Super Bowl,” one fan was writing, “If a potato could talk, it would sound like Tom Brady.” Reluctantly, the soft media critic in The Athletic gave him a performance rating of “2 1/4 goats out of four.” Poor Burkhardt had to keep saying one word to his partner — “Tom,” as in demanding a response — throughout a 33-17 blowout by the Cowboys.
“With you coming in the booth, I made sure I did my hair real nice,” Burkhardt said. “I figured there would be some on-cameras over here today.”
“I do what they tell me, understand that,” Brady said. ‘’I’m still a rookie here.”
Must he remind us? He would prefer, in his mind, to be quarterbacking the Browns instead of explaining what is wrong with Deshaun Watson. After another poor outing by a troubled player who was paid $230 million guaranteed by a shabby owner, Brady only offered this afterward: “By no means is the season over for Cleveland. There’s a lot of football remaining in this season.” Why not comment on the booing home fans? Why not explain why team boss Jimmy Haslam was so desperate to ignore Watson’s history of sexual misconduct and harassment? Or, explain the major differences between Watson and Prescott, who was awarded a record-breaking deal of $240 million over four years?
Nah. As a tweeter posted: “Tom Brady is to broadcasting as Michael Jordan is to baseball.” At least Jordan received fist-bumps on the court. When Brady offered one in the booth, rules analyst Mike Pereira didn’t see it. Did his partners notice his new Fox commercial before kickoff? Brady saw self-images from his past — Buccaneers, Patriots and Michigan — inquiring, “What they’re really asking is why don’t you quit football?’ They don’t understand that you live and breathe for football. Because you’re Tom Freaking Brady. And our football journey isn’t even close to done.”
“Back to work,” Tom Freaking Brady said in September 2024.
I know the bosses at Fox Sports too well to think they’ll accept constant Brady bashing, online and in real media. More to the point, Brady will ask why he’s dealing with nonsense when he has no way of overturning it. Even if he mastered the craft, he doesn’t have a football game where he can prove himself again and win. If they hate him, they’ll keep hating him — unlike Troy Aikman, who preceded him at Fox before jumping to ESPN, and Greg Olsen, who was praised nationally as the No. 1 analyst with Burkhardt last season.
“I’m wrong a lot, believe me,” Brady said. “Just ask my friends.”
I’d have mentioned as much when he said of the Browns, who were down 20-3 at halftime: “We’ll see if they make adjustments.”
He is the one paid mega-dollars to suggest adjustments. He is the one paid to doubt Watson and coach Kevin Stefanski. He is the one to praise the Dallas coaches, though he referred to Mike McCarthy as “Coach McCarthy.” He faded away.
I wonder if he’ll accept $193,000 for next week’s work. He should make the offer. Until then, I haven’t seen anyone in sports history rip off administrators this sad. Kick him in the ass, Shanks. Bill Belichick would have. Otherwise, I have a mute button that will be used.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.