Tom Brady has vowed to speak his mind while serving as Fox’s new lead NFL analyst during the upcoming season.
Brady offered somewhat of a preview of what he’ll be as a broadcaster during a recent conversation with Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports.
“I think the quarterbacking has gone backward a little bit in the NFL,” Brady told Robinson. “I don’t think it’s improved. I don’t think the teaching’s improved. I think maybe the physical fundamentals might be a little bit improved because there’s better information out there for quarterbacks to study on mechanics. But I don’t think quarterbacks really are really field generals right now like they used to be.”
Even before Brady retired from playing “for good” in February 2023, he blasted what he referred to as “a lot of bad football” he watched during the 2022 season. More recently, Brady criticized younger players for “making it too much about I and me because of social media, because of branding and all that.”
Regarding quarterbacks, Brady noted that he was “developed” as far back as college to “ultimately take control of the 11 guys on offense” during NFL games.
“When I looked at Peyton Manning, he was a guy that I looked up to because he had ultimate control,” Brady continued. “And I think the game’s regressed in a little bit of that way, based on what’s happened in high school football, college football and then the NFL’s getting a much lesser developed quarterback at this point.”
Brady seemingly has little interest in helping turn college quarterbacks into day-one NFL-ready prospects as a coach. Along with working for Fox while on a 10-year contract reportedly worth $375M, he is still attempting to become a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders.
“I just don’t see it the same way that I saw it back then [in my career],” Brady added about how he felt as a rookie quarterback in the spring of 2000. “I see a lesser developed player, lesser developed coaches. They’re not teaching anymore. There’s less time to teach. There’s a lot of reasons why. … First of all, we’ve got to become aware of it, and then we need to put some things in place to make those changes.”
How Brady addresses such topics will help determine if fans embrace or reject him as the replacement for award-winning analyst Greg Olsen. Brady may have to learn that viewers will want him to speak openly and honestly without suggesting that the product they’re watching isn’t as good as it was even a few years ago.