The Super Bowl included several events within the big event, as in addition to the game to determine the new NFL champion, the Halftime Show with Kendrick Lamar was also important; the presence of Donald Trump; Taylor Swift; the commercials on television and also the debut of Tom Brady as a commentator on FOX’s broadcast of the big sports, music, and social event in the United States.
Just as there were expectations to see if the Chiefs would become the first team to win a Super Bowl three times in a row, there was also a lot of interest in seeing how Brady performed in front of a TV audience of over 100 million people.
The conclusion is that both received a beating: Kansas City from the Eagles and Brady from the columnists who analyzed his performance.
What did specialists say about Brady's work as a commentator?
In September, with the start of the 2024 NFL season, Tom Brady made his debut as an NFL commentator after signing a 10-year, $375 million contract with FOX and was immediately elevated to the "A" team alongside play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt. In the process, he displaced the respected and beloved analyst Greg Olsen.
As part of the rotation of the four major channels that broadcast the NFL, this year it was FOX's turn to broadcast the Super Bowl. Despite still being a newcomer in this field, they did not hesitate to pair Brady with Burkhardt to comment on the most important televised event in the United States.
However, Brady did not live up to the importance of the Super Bowl and showed the same doubts that accompanied his first season as a television analyst.
In his column for The Athletic, specialist Andrew Marchand said that “ending his rookie broadcast season in the Super Bowl, Brady, the analyst, wasn’t that much better than the Kansas City Chiefs, who were shellacked by the Philadelphia Eagles....Brady told us a lot of what was happening, but we wanted to know from his 4-D mind — why?”.
The criticism that Brady does not use the knowledge that led him to be the best player in history as an analyst was also used by Ben Axelrod on the site Awful Announcing: “Listening to Brady’s broadcasting debut in the big game, you wouldn’t have known he had ever played a Super Bowl before—let alone won seven of them”.
Daniel Fienberg illustrated it like this in his review for The Hollywood Reporter: “It’s like if Meryl Streep announced that she was finally ready to direct a movie, using all of the combined wisdom from her acclaimed acting career, and that movie was, like… Sonic the Hedgehog 4.”
Marchand also questioned why Brady did not explain the interception to Mahones that resulted in a key touchdown for the Eagles.
Axelrod did not find Brady’s work to be all that bad. “He is just fine as a broadcaster, the type of analyst you wouldn’t bat an eye at if he was calling a second-tier Big Ten game on a random Saturday afternoon in October. Except this wasn’t a random Saturday in the fall; it was the freaking Super Bowl”
The Awful Announcing columnist went further and proposed that for the next season Olsen should return to the FOX “A” duo and Brady should be moved to pregame commentary as he “is at his best in such settings.”
Will Brady return for a second season?
Despite all the questioning and restrictions imposed by the NFL for being a minority owner of the Raiders (he cannot criticize referees, the league, or attend pre-production meetings with the teams he will comment on Sundays), Tom Brady's agent confirmed that he will continue working for FOX as an analyst and plans to fulfill his 10-year contract.
At least now you will have plenty of time to prepare for the next Super Bowl that FOX will broadcast in 2029.