How did Tom Brady do calling his first NFL game?

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.”

Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.

Now that’s funny.

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.)

And it’s not like Fox didn’t promote Brady’s debut (for that kind of money, who can blame them?), including with a dramatic commercial in which younger versions of Brady question why he would bother to come back to football. The best part is when a Tampa Bay Buccaneers version asks, “Why not buy a soccer team?” Current Brady looks back and says, “Got one.”

So it’s not unfair to expect Brady to be at least good right out of the gate. To repeat, he owns a soccer team.

The NFL is back:The biggest changes you’ll see this season

More Bill Belichick stories from Tom Brady, please

Lousy games are the toughest to announce. A thriller keeps announcers occupied. A blowout means they have to improvise, and that can be tough for inexperienced broadcasters. Again, Brady was fine at it, with no great shakes. For instance, any football fan would love to have heard a few insider stories about what it was like playing for Bill Belichick, his former coach with the New England Patriots, while they were winning all those Super Bowls.

There was little of that, at least until the fourth quarter when Brady said, laughing, “I played with a coach who wasn’t afraid to cuss out players” and talked about the importance of holding players accountable.

More of that, please.

Early on Brady went to the cliché well, and often. Several times he used the Telestrator to circle Cowboys’ linebacker Micah Parsons before a play and said, “There’s Micah.” I mean, we know. He’s got a number, after all.

And this explanation wasn’t particularly revelatory, or even much good: “These negative plays hurt you so much in football. So many of these games I went into, we figured out, how do you not go backwards. … Negative plays really keep you from scoring.”

It’s true, at least, in much the way saying, “If you step on a rusty nail while barefoot it will hurt” is true. It’s just a little obvious.

Brady famously has an insane work ethic and has reportedly been preparing like a madman for his debut. But all the practice in the world can’t replicate calling a game live, for real, in front of millions of people. If you’re wondering whether Brady is worth the money Fox is paying him, the answer is easy: no. Nobody is. (Remember when people lost it over Tony Romo’s contract in 2020? And that was for half as much as Brady is making.)

More to the point, is he worth dumping Olsen from the lead broadcast? Also no. Olsen has proven he’s really good. Brady has so far proven he is competent, nothing more. But money talks — with a lot more confidence than Brady did Sunday.