Tom Brady's Fox debut questioned across sports media

Tom Brady was supposed to come out guns blazing as an announcer because he would put more work into being an NFL analyst than he did an NFL player, but in his debut on Sunday, Brady appeared nervous and scattered.

It doesn’t take a whiz to put two and two together. NFL fans could almost hear Brady sifting through his own mind in real-time to find the right thing to say during the small windows he had to operate in alongside Kevin Burkhard on Fox as the Dallas Cowboys blew out the Cleveland Browns.

In their NFL weekend reaction shows late Sunday and early Monday, Bill Simmons, Colin Cowherd, and Dan Patrick all came to the same conclusion about the GOAT quarterback’s first broadcasting reps: He was overprepared and needed to learn the job.

“Brady, I was just hoping he could get through sentences,” Simmons joked. “It was a rough debut, to say the least … he felt over-prepared to me … it almost felt to me like the excuses after (President Joe) Biden’s debate.”

Patrick had a similar take when discussing Brady’s debut on The Dan Patrick Show on Monday morning.

“Tom Brady knows football. He has to know television,” Patrick said. “He didn’t understand TV yesterday … there were pauses, his cadence wasn’t smooth, there was very little synchronicity.”

Patrick said the issues were fixable, but Brady needs to be aggressive and in attack mode as a broadcaster , just as he was in his MVP prime as an NFL quarterback .

Cowherd, who has to toe the line as a Fox employee even on his independent podcast, expressed optimism that Brady will improve over the course of his media career the same way he did in building up from a late-round pick out of Michigan into a legend behind center.

“I thought he was really nervous to start,” Cowherd said. “It’s a really hard job.”

After his weekly cohost, John Middlekauff, was blunter in his assessment that Brady was poor in the booth, Cowherd gave in a little more, calling Brady “choppy” and emphasizing he will need reps to improve.

At Awful Announcing, Ben Axelrod struck a similar chord in his review of Brady’s debut, calling him a “ work in progress .”

It’s impossible to see how great Brady was on the field and how aggressively he has embraced his new Fox gig and not expect improvement. Brady will be more comfortable by letting the game come to him over time.

The question is how good he can get with those reps with five months to go before he calls the Super Bowl.

The post Bill Simmons, Colin Cowherd, Dan Patrick all come to the same conclusion on Tom Brady TV debut appeared first on Awful Announcing .