Everybody says no one watches football games for the announcers.
And everybody is right. Except for Sunday. There’s no question a lot of people watched the Dallas Cowboys–Cleveland Browns on Fox Sports for the announcers. Or one announcer: Tom Brady.
Not that it takes much to get anyone to watch an NFL game; of the 100 most-watched shows on TV in 2023, 93 were NFL games.
Still, this was a big deal, the greatest quarterback in NFL history making his broadcast debut. The game, a 33-17 Dallas win, was pretty much a dog, which is unfortunate. Brady handled himself OK. He was clearly nervous at the outset, and his cadence was a little halting and strange. He warmed up a bit as the game went on.
How did Tom Brady do?
Of course, social media slammed Brady from the start. X users would join Philadelphia Eagles fans in throwing snowballs at Santa Claus. One in particular cracked me up, posted a few minutes into the game: “I don’t want to overreact to week 1 but Tom Brady is the worst announcer in the NFL.”
As someone who was the worst high-school football announcer of all time, I take no pleasure in joining in the piling on. This was the first live NFL game Brady ever called. It’s sort of like the idea of a critic not reviewing a new late-night show after its first episode since it’s something that is going to change and grow over time.
Not that any of this has ever stopped me, and it won’t here.
Fox is paying Brady a reported $375 million over 10 years, after all. What’s more, installing Brady on the network’s No. 1 broadcast team alongside play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt meant demoting Greg Olsen — who is really good, among the best in the game — to the No. 2 team, with a corresponding pay cut. (Olsen and Joe Davis called the Atlanta Falcons-Pittsburgh Steelers game earlier in the day.)
