The more you listen to Tom Brady analyze Fox’s No. 1 NFL game live every week, the more you wonder why he’s getting paid nearly $400 million over 10 years to offer milquetoast critiques that add nothing noteworthy to the broadcast. And when considering Brady’s limitations as an announcer now that he’s a co-owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, you really start to question how thoughtless giant corporations can be when handing out generational wealth by the tenfold.
But gosh dang it, Fox made Brady the mediocre face of their pro football coverage, and they’re clearly going to try to get their money’s worth at all possible costs. Even if their brazen uses for his broadcast “talents” are silly, weird, useless, and seemingly shoe-horned into their coverage without a second thought.
That’s exactly what I thought of when I saw Fox’s NFL studio show debut a hologram Brady (yes, really) “live” right next to Terry Bradshaw, Jimmy Johnson, and the rest of the gang.
🪄📺 @TomBrady is getting ready to call the #Chiefs vs #49ers game in Santa Clara, but through the magic of television he's in studio with our crew in LA! pic.twitter.com/AcBCGoTJza
— FOX Sports: NFL (@NFLonFOX) October 20, 2024
(Jeff Goldblum in a movie about prehistoric animals voice.)
Seriously, did no one stop to think about whether they should do this when they realized they could?
Look, again, I get it. Fox paid a retired Brady nearly as much money as an active Patrick Mahomes to simply talk about football. The network is probably and understandably looking for returns on its investment everywhere. But this insistence on making the NFL’s preeminent boring Wonder Bread personality such a fixture will inevitably lead to unremarkable little episodes like this.
Fox is trying to make Brady — the real one and the fuzzy virtual one — much more interesting than he really is, and we all have to suffer for it as a result.
