How Tom Brady used 'gap year' to prepare for broadcast debut

Tom Brady retired from playing in the NFL for good in February 2023 and then spent a "gap year" preparing to become Fox's lead in-game analyst, a job he'll officially begin this Sunday when he calls the Week 1 matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and Cleveland Browns.

In separate articles published on Wednesday, The Athletic's Andrew Marchand and Michael McCarthy of Front Office Sports detailed how Brady got himself ready to replace Greg Olsen on Fox's top announcing team.

"Brady would not only study fellow lead analysts, such as CBS’ Tony Romo, ESPN’s Troy Aikman and NBC’s Cris Collinsworth, " Marchand explained, "to see how they did the job, but also in conversations with Fox Sports executive producer Brad Zager, play-by-play partner Kevin Burkhardt, and the network’s No. 1 game producer, Richie Zyontz, Brady would inquire about how much producers talk in your earpiece during a game or what a director does."

Additionally, Brady shadowed NBC's "Sunday Night Football" crew during a game this past January and spent time in the production truck with NBC lead producer Rob Hyland. McCarthy notes that Brady and Burkhardt have "called a full season’s worth of practice games" leading up to this Sunday's contest at Cleveland's Huntington Bank Field.

Multiple NFL reporters have suggested that league owners don't want Brady serving as both a broadcaster for a main media partner and a partial owner of the Las Vegas Raiders. Brady's pre-game access to other clubs will be severely restricted if his Raiders transaction is approved — which could happen as soon as this fall — though Marchand passes along that Fox "seems very unconcerned" about how those limitations will impact TB12's on-air performances.

"Tom Brady probably would think that he doesn’t need to go to practice to understand how a player is playing," ESPN's Adam Schefter said during a Tuesday appearance on "The Pat McAfee Show," as shared by Brandon Contes of Awful Announcing. "And he doesn’t need to sit through meetings to understand how a player is playing, that he can do this on his own without that. If there are some owners that want to impose rules like that that prevent him from going to a practice , then he probably won’t go to practice."

Brady and Fox agreed to a 10-year contract reportedly worth $375M that was first announced in 2022. He's thus far given no public indication he has had second thoughts about either calling games or pursuing his desired Raiders deal.

"I hear Brady is approaching [the Fox job] like he did his NFL career. Very focused," a source told McCarthy.

McCarthy and others believe Brady's Fox career "could be short-lived" if he has to choose between the network and the Raiders. While Brady can afford to walk away from Fox at any time, it certainly sounds like he's committed to giving the company more than one season of work.