Ownership handcuffs may spell end of Brady's TV gig

When Fox Sports announced in 2022 that it had hired Tom Brady to be its new lead TV analyst for the princely sum of $375 million over 10 years, it was confusing for a few reasons.

At the time, Brady was still playing. He had never done a lick of television analysis, and although he had spent many years occasionally talking into a microphone, he had never said anything particularly compelling.

And, hoo boy, that money: Not only was it more than double the annual salary of experienced, high-profile NFL analysts like Troy Aikman and Tony Romo, it was far more than Brady had ever earned in a season while literally becoming the most accomplished quarterback of all time.

Why did Fox want him at such a price? NFL broadcasts are already bulletproof: People would watch the Sunday afternoon Fox broadcast in similar numbers whether Greg Olsen, Brady, or just about any former player was alongside Kevin Burkhardt in the booth. It does not require a Hall of Fame career and seven Super Bowls to say: "Dak Prescott needs to be more careful with the football, Kevin."

The mystery has only deepened since. Brady took a season off in 2023 and made his Fox debut in September. He's been underwhelming. In his first games, Brady seemed reluctant to say much, leaving all kinds of awkward gaps where an analyst would normally speak.

He's improving on the job - which is to say he isn't silent anymore, but he still doesn't seem to know when the insight of someone with his vast experience and accomplishments would make a good addition to the broadcast. He often narrates replays as though he is doing the play-by-play, which isn't useful. (We already know the guy caught the ball, Tom. We just saw him do it.)

The even stranger part of Brady's broadcast career is that he's chosen to increase the degree of difficulty on top of those challenges. During his sabbatical from the NFL, Brady struck up a business partnership with American hedge-fund investor Tom Wagner. He became a minority owner of Birmingham City FC after Wagner bought the soccer club, which plays in England's third division.

The pair have since become minority owners of the Las Vegas Raiders in a deal formally approved last week. That's where things get weird. Since Brady is now an owner, NFL rules prohibit him from criticizing other teams or league officials. In anticipation of the ownership deal closing, he was already operating under restrictions that prevented him from watching team practices or taking part in pregame production meetings where coaches and players sometimes offer broadcasters insight into their game plans.

It's debatable whether those meetings provide anything that improves the broadcast - "Coach Campbell told us last night that Jared Goff is one of the toughest players he's been around, Jim" - but it's a plain fact that Brady gets less information about the teams he's covering than his analyst peers.

Restricting his ability to be critical is a bigger problem. Rarely is an NFL game played without a few officiating controversies, largely because the league's rules force officials to make subjective calls about things like whether a defensive player made a sufficient attempt to avoid landing with his full weight on a quarterback. Brady cannot provide his honest assessment of a questionable decision when viewers know he's not allowed to say, "Bad call there, Kevin."

He could, theoretically, take his chances that the NFL will let him say what he wants, but this would understandably drive non-Raiders owners up the wall; they're routinely fined when their employees speak ill of the referees. As for not being critical of other teams, that's part of what's expected from analysts when a team in a game they're broadcasting does something that warrants criticism.

For example: As a player, Brady was an absolute master of the two-minute drill. If there is one area where he's supremely qualified to issue judgment, it's when a coach and/or quarterback botches one of those situations at the end of the half. But does that count as being critical of a team? Would Brady be more or less likely to find fault with one of the Raiders' AFC West rivals, or would he have to pretend his bias doesn't exist?

It all feels, in a word, unworkable. Brady seems to have enough going on in his business ventures that he doesn't need to give up his weekends to offer sanitized opinions on NFL games. Fox presumably didn't agree to pay him all that money for those sanitized opinions either.

This would all become much more awkward if Brady had to cover a Raiders game, such as in the Super Bowl this season (Fox has the rights). Fortunately for all parties, Vegas is 2-5 with head coach Antonio Pierce and quarterback Gardner Minshew at the helm. A championship-game conflict of interest is exceedingly unlikely.

Scott Stinson is a contributing writer for theScore.