Tom Brady Says He Expects to Be Critical As a Broadcaster

The quarterback hints that he could take after one legendary broadcaster from a very different sport.

When Tom Brady retires—whenever that may be—he is set to join Fox’s top broadcast booth as the color analyst next to Kevin Burkhardt. Brady has avoided making many waves with the things he says as quarterback over the last two decades, but that may change when he gets into the booth.

The last quarterback to make that big jump right from the field to the booth, former Cowboys star Tony Romo, has immediately become among the NFL’s more popular voices, and he takes an extremely positive tack. Brady could head in the other direction, based on comments made during the most recent episode of his Let’s Go! podcast with Jim Gray and guest Charles Barkley.

During the show, he revealed that he may be “more Johnny Miller,” citing the former PGA pro-turned-critical NBC Sports golf analyst who called tournaments from 1990 to 2019.

“When I watch football now, the only thing I see, nine out of 10 it’s, ‘Man, that was a really bad play,’” Brady said. “As opposed to the, ‘Wow, the spectacular play that [Patrick] Mahomes made or the spectacular play that Josh Allen made.’ Now, it’s like, ‘Man, what bad defensive play, what a bad play by the quarterback.’

“… When you play with Randy Moss, when you play with Wes Welker, when you play with [Rob] Gronkowski and [Julian] Edelman and Mike Evans, you see greatness. And there’s a standard for perfection that I want to see the game played at.”

Brady insists that he doesn’t plan on being negative, but like Barkley with the NBA, he doesn’t see himself sugarcoating things when he sees poor play on the field. 

“I just feel like there’s probably more Johnny Miller in me, where when I used to watch him on golf telecasts, it was just scathing sometimes. ‘What, that guy choked under pressure?’ or whatever. That’s essentially how I end up seeing the game a lot now. Not that I want to be negative, but I do want to point out—and [Bill] Belichick taught this to me a lot—it’s hard to win a game in the NFL. There’s more games lost in the NFL than they’re won. If you don’t screw it up, you’ve got a great chance to win. Because most people do just mess it up.”

Brady again nodded to the “Patriots system,” where strong blocking and tackling fundamentals led to incredible success. It doesn’t sound as if the booth-bound Brady will be watching his tongue when teams playing in the games he will call fail to live up to those simple, but lofty, expectations.