The Draw Play

Tommy is back in our lives, and you know what that means: DISCOURSE! I know what it means, that’s why I’m here. If you read this site, you already know my qualifications as a card-carrying government-certified Tom Brady Hater. So you better believe I got THOUGHTS.

My thoughts are that everyone is overreacting because it’s Tom Brady.

The biggest problem with Tom in the booth through these early weeks is that he’s not much of anything. He’s not bad, he’s just…there. He’s bringing nothing to the table. Most of the problems come from the fact that he doesn’t say much of substance and he seems a bit awkward. It’s a new job that honestly seems pretty hard, I’m not going to ding him into the pits of announcer hell because he left some empty spaces on air during his first few broadcasts a couple times. But it’s Tommy Touchdowns Brady, which means expectations are through the roof. If you hate Tom Brady, you are also guilty of setting the bar exceptionally high against him. Can’t blame you for that, Tom is very fun to hate. It also doesn’t help Tom that he’s clearly a downgrade from Greg Olsen, who was in many ways quite a surprise.

Olsen came in as a secondary option who had to fill the space that Tom vacated when he signed the deal and then unretired to go suck ass for one last season. He was almost immediately the best football color commentator on TV. A lot of people, myself included, are mad that a clearly talented commentator was shoved off to make way for the big celebrity. It feels like how animated movies stopped hiring voice actors and started hiring celebrities to be voice actors instead, because Chris Pratt brings in more eyes than someone who would actually be better at the job. It makes me laugh when I see people say things like “Well Charles Martinet’s Mario voice would have been insufferable for 90 minutes”, like the man isn’t talented or capable of downshifting the tone to fit the project for a character he has embodied for decades. It went to Pratt because soccer moms know who Chris Pratt is. Only niche nerds know who Charles Martinet is. Tom Brady is Chris Pratt, is what I’m saying. A guy we all thought was cool once and then overexposed and the more we learned about him as a person the weirder he is.

But Tom’s lack of substance as a commentator so far is still unquestionably an issue. Olsen represented the best of the job, offering the right balance of platitudes, genuine insight into moment-to-moment action, and perfectly balanced energy. Tony Romo, who was beloved early on, brought a golden retriever level of energy and a herefore unseen level of insight. Cris Collinsworth, who has his haters (I am peak of that mountain), still had his incredible ability to bring attention to lesser respected players like linemen and how he would deep dive on a couple of guys over the course of an entire game could get grating, but also provide a lot of knowledge you didn’t know. Both Romo and Collinsworth have gotten worse over time and devolved into glazing the same players over and over and farting cliches every ten seconds but they came to the job with value. If anything those guys prove to me that Color Commentator should be a 5-year hard end contract. Once you are out of the game for about 5 years, the insight you bring to the table diminishes greatly as the sport changes, and your ability to keep up plummets and you turn into platitude/glazing machine. If you get lucky you stay employed long enough to stop giving a shit and loosen up into a fun drunk (looking at you, Troy Aikman). I repeat, hard-cut color commentators after a span of time. Even Greg Olsen will be unremarkable at some point, sooner rather than later.

Tom has brought none of this insight or energy to the gig so far and that’s his biggest problem because that was kind of the thing we expected him to be good at. Tom has charisma. He’s pretty good in commercials, he has good comedic timing when reading scripts and such. He felt natural. I didn’t expect him to be awkward in the booth but I guess delivering live commentary is not the same thing as acting for a camera when you can go till you get it right. But this is a guy who spent 20 years as a football-obsessed machine. He has knowledge and insight Cris “I want to lick Mahomes’ Asshole” Collinsworth can only dream of. Why isn’t he sharing any of it? Why has he given us basic ass shit when that goddamn brain of his is surely capable of out-predicting Romo at Romo’s peak? Why has he essentially come out of the gate like late-era Phil Simms? Tom Brady probably has enough football knowledge to talk for 5 hours about one specific formation so why are we getting “they need to get a good amount of yards here to set up an easy third down”? I could have fucking commentated that shit, TOM.

Also of note: he has restrictions due to his minority stake in the Raiders. Frankly I think that is enough of a conflict of interest that he should be banned from the booth entirely, but alas. We don’t know exactly what restrictions are on the guy so it is very possible his nothingburger commentary is because he can’t go hard. If that’s the case this whole endeavor was a waste of time and Fox is stuck paying far too much money to a severely neutered Brady.

He’ll probably get better as time goes on. With that contract of his he likely isn’t going anywhere so I sure hope he gets better. Maybe Greg Olsen will get a better gig than Fox’s B-team. Stick him with Al Michaels on Prime, Kirk is a terrible partner for Michaels and can’t keep the old drunk in check like Collinsworth could.