There are few things Tom Brady appears to love more than making sure he’s in the spotlight constantly.
So, he was due for an announcement.
The future Hall of Famer, in a pretty big surprise, is going to become Fox’s lead NFL analyst once he retires from football, both the network and Brady himself announced Tuesday.
Brady never seemed like the kind of person who would go into the media/broadcasting space upon retirement, but that belief is now out the window, as he won’t be leaving our television screens on Sundays anytime soon.
It’s already been a weird offseason for Brady, who retired then unretired over just a few weeks time, then it was leaked he had been trying to get to the Dolphins. Lining up a post-playing career gig in broadcasting adds even more intrigue on what his plans are beyond this season.
Appearing on 670 The Score’s “Mully and Haugh” on Tuesday, ProFootballTalk’s Mike Florio offered some insight into what the Fox arrangement means.
“People think this automatically means this is his last year and he’s going to go join Fox. There’s nothing in the announcement that implies he’s going to Fox next year, all they said is when he retires from football,” Florio said. “There are people who assume this means there’s no way he’s going to play for any team other than the Buccaneers in 2023. Look, he was trying to get to Miami, and I know there are plenty of Buccaneers fans who are in deep denial about that fact, he was trying to get to Miami. That was why he retired, that was happening in the background and the Brian Flores lawsuit pulled the plug on the effort by Tom Brady to first become a minority owner of the Dolphins, then slide from the front office onto the playing field.
“That Fox deal doesn’t rule out the possibility of him going somewhere else. He now has the ultimate bird in the hand with Fox, he can activate that whenever he wants, but he’ll keep playing until he chooses to stop. This doesn’t mean he’s retiring after the season by any stretch of the imagination. It’s going to be a constant topic of conversation and discussion and then once he does finally retire, he’ll constantly be on the screen calling games and working for Fox.”
While any network would go out of its way to acquire Brady, the timing of the announcement walks Fox into a potentially precarious spot.
“That becomes very interesting when you talk about the inherent conflict of interest Fox now has when doing Bucs games because one of their employees is working for the Buccaneers as well, and they’re covering those games,” Florio said. “I know that there have been situations where – for example, when Brian Billick was calling games for Fox and his brother-in-law Mike Smith was coach of the Falcons, there were coaches of teams that were playing the Falcons when Billick rolls into a production meeting were very leary about Billick with his connection to Mike Smith and the Falcons.
“Well, if you’re a team that's playing Tampa Bay in any Fox game, do you have your antenna up a little bit than usual? What kind of relationships, what kind of pipeline is there, what kind of obligation do these people feel that they may have to share information with Tom Brady off the grid? I know in a sport where everyone is paranoid, that is something that someone is going to be paranoid about.”
Brady is committed to the Bucs this season, and next offseason he will be an unrestricted free agent. At that point, he can join any team he wants or decide to go upstairs and be a broadcaster.
Not a bad situation.
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