Dan Patrick sounded the alarm on Tom Brady long ago.
It wasn’t that the former SportsCenter anchor and longtime host of The Dan Patrick Show talked up or talked down Brady as a way of drumming up content for his loyal listeners. Rather, just two months into Brady’s 10-year broadcasting gig with Fox Sports, Patrick found a particular arrangement with the six-time Super Bowl winner “problematic.”
That arrangement has come more into focus in the past few days, as the Las Vegas Raiders have hinted that Brady, a minority owner with the ball club, will have a major role in picking the team’s next head coach, as well as finding the heir apparent to the Aidan O’Connell, Gardner Minshew debacle in the quarterbacks room.
Patrick doubted that Brady would be able to pull double duty at the time. Whether that has anything to do with why he’s struggled to cement himself as a top broadcaster, as Awful Announcing’s readers ranked Brady and Kevin Burkhardt as the No. 14 booth in the sport, is truly anyone’s guess.
That said, Patrick believes that Brady will be one-and-done at this broadcasting thing that’ll see him call the Super Bowl for Fox, take his ball and go home. Patrick isn’t the only one in sports media who holds that opinion, either.
“I just see Brady as a one-and-done. He does the Super Bowl, and he decides he’s going to be more involved with the Raiders,” Patrick said Wednesday. “I just don’t see Tom sort of one foot in and one foot out with the Raiders. He’s too much of a competitor. And it’s one thing, you can compete in this business, like I compete with myself every day. We compete with ourselves each day, but this is different.
“These are wins and losses with Tom. And creating something, building something. And I think that would probably intrigue him, as opposed to being a broadcaster. I mean, Tom can be at a certain level, and he knows that there’ll just be people who don’t like him just because he’s Tom Brady, or he beat their team, or whatever it might be. Tom is competing against Tom. And I don’t know if he gets the same kind of adrenaline rush. Now, he will. When you do a playoff game, when you do a Super Bowl, Tom’s gonna be like, ‘Oh my God, that was awesome,’ but it’s still not that awesome of playing in it or you’re part of a team.”
A different team — the Fox broadcast team.
“He’s used to winning and losing,” said Patrick. “And if you get done with a show, only you decide if you’ve won or lost. ‘Hey, how did I sound?’ ‘Was that good?’ This is different with the Raiders.”
If Brady wants to be involved with the day-to-day operations, why would he sign a 10-year contract at Fox?
“Well, he got that before he got the Raiders situation,” Patrick replied. “He didn’t know that was going to be approved. Now, once again, I don’t have any information on that, but I’m just thinking Tom realized broadcasting was a little bit tougher than he thought. I think he thought: ‘You know what? This is fun. I’m around the game, and I’ve been around a lot of former players and coaches who realize that those who make it look easy, that’s how they stand out— those are the stars.’ It’s not easy.”
It’s especially difficult for Brady. You have to put in the time and work, and Brady can’t even attend these production meetings.
“I think, Tom, it was an offer he couldn’t refuse,” said Patrick. “And, then, I think he probably realizes that, ‘Alright, I kind of like it. It’s kind of fun, but nothing compares to competing.’ And he’s one of the ultimate competitors…”
And maybe that’s the problem: broadcasting is about connection, not competition — and for Brady, winning was never just part of the job; it was the job.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.