Broadcasting legend gets real about Tom Brady

Maybe it takes a great broadcaster to know a great broadcaster. Because while the masses are criticizing Tom Brady, the former NFL quarterback appears to have Al Michaels in his corner.

After more than two years of anticipation, Brady finally made his NFL analyst debut for Fox alongside play-by-play voice Kevin Burkhardt. And while most of the reviews were either bad or not great, Michaels offered a glowing assessment of the seven-time Super Bowl champion’s debut in the booth.

Michaels spoke with Sports Illustrated’s Jimmy Traina this week about a variety of topics , but the Hall-of-Fame broadcaster’s thoughts on Brady seemed particularly notable.

“Outstanding coming out of the gate,” Michaels told Traina of Brady. “He had a nice flow with Kevin Burkhardt. I found it to be a very comfortable listen. People expecting Tom to deliver things from the Holy Grail, no. The game was not a compelling game. Tom did something that’s very hard to do. He kept the audience in a blowout, and a road blowout on top of that. Some of the things that Tom talked about in the fourth quarter made me not want to hit the remote to go to another game.

“I thought when he discussed how hard it was to play against a Mike Zimmer defense, he couldn’t have said it any better. Perfect. I think he had a very good sense of timing. I think for a debut, it was terrific.”

If you’ve spent this week reading the various reviews of Brady, “outstanding, comfortable, compelling, perfect, and terrific” probably weren’t adjectives you saw too often. Brady looked tense from the start and his comfort level didn’t appear to improve much throughout the broadcast. He sounded overprepared and cautious more than he did well-timed and forthright.

Brady isn’t the “ embarrassment to the profession ” that WFAN’s Evan Roberts dubbed him, and he’s not the “outstanding…comfortable listen” that Michaels seemingly watched. He’s somewhere right in the middle. And after one week, that’s an OK place for Brady to be.

The biggest problem for Brady is the insurmountable expectations placed on him by Fox. The investment, the decision to have him usurp a very popular analyst in Greg Olsen, the two years of anticipation, and the commercials leading up to his debut in the booth. None of it set Brady up for success.

Maybe he won’t end up being the next John Madden, but Brady is certainly capable of having a long career as a serviceable $375 million analyst who brings inherent star power to every broadcast, if he wants it.

[ Sports Illustrated ]

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