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Before Brady can really make progress, he needs to get comfortable in the cabin.

By Chad Finn, The Boston Globe

September 9, 2024 | 07:20 AM

The reactions I got to Tom Brady’s debut as a Fox NFL color analyst on Sunday were so overwhelmingly negative that I’m surprised no one messaged me saying it’s finally time for Drew Bledsoe to take over his job.

But the collective sentiment was the same sarcastic tone. One emailer, who signed his letter JC, did elicit a laugh.

“If a potato could talk,” he wrote, “it would sound like Tom Brady.”

It goes without saying that the seven-time Super Bowl champion and Fox’s $375 million man, who replaced the excellent Greg Olsen alongside Kevin Burkhardt on the network’s No. 1 team, wasn’t an instant sensation with viewers the way CBS’s Tony Romo was seven years ago.

No one should have expected that anyway. As I wrote on Sunday, Brady is a polarizing figure because of his tremendous success against the favorite teams of so many people who now watch him on TV.

I wouldn’t dare say that many of the people who were ridiculing him before the end of the first quarter of the Browns-Cowboys game had made up their minds 10 minutes before the game started.

But when he struggled — and he did, often, especially in the beginning — they were ready to pounce, to mock him, to declare him a failure. They really enjoyed it, to the point that everyone seemed to forget that this was someone with an extraordinary history of improvement and eventual excellence when he was doubted.

I’ll say it again. Brady is going to be really good at this. (Hey, I didn’t mean immediately.)

I’ll also say this: He’s got about 80 yards to go before he reaches the end zone. And he’s got to get there this year — Fox has the Super Bowl telecast. Everything Brady does on the road is warming up for that.

Brady’s strength — ultimately — will be his ability to instantly identify and articulate what he sees. The schemes, the nuances, the intricacies. He missed an opportunity just after halftime to tell us exactly what adjustments the Browns, trailing 20-3, should have made. Instead, he said, “We’ll see if they make adjustments.”

He easy could call plays like Romo did early on — Brady hinted several times Sunday at what the Cowboys and Browns were planning — but he’ll never have that kind of initially engaging, frenetic energy. His thing must be real insight into what could happen, and what happened next, and why it happened.

Before Brady can really make progress, he has to get comfortable in the booth. To get comfortable in the booth, he has to have a better feel for the tempo, the rhythm and the speed of a broadcast. That way, it couldn’t be much different than how he felt the first time he stepped onto an NFL field as a quarterback.

Burkhardt, the ultimate pro, often had to prompt Brady to speak his mind. There were frequent pauses where color analysts usually intervene, and Brady really struggled with cadence — pausing after every four or five words, almost as if they wouldn’t come out easily. He didn’t sound like someone who’d built a broadcast base of 17 exhibition games, or worked two and a half preseason games.

There were awkward moments, both early and late in what was ultimately a bust: the Cowboys won 33-17. When Burkhardt introduced him to the viewers, Brady replied, “It’s been a journey, but I love being your partner.”

That sounded more like the renewal of a wedding vow than the start of a football broadcast.

In the final minute, Brady seemed unsure how to decide the game.

“The season is far from over for Cleveland,” he said. “There’s a lot of football left in this season.”

Well, yeah, sure. It’s week 1, Tom. Even if it’s the Browns.

The fact that Rules analyst Mike Pereira didn’t see Brady when he fist bumped him was treated as an awkward moment on social media. It likely made Patriots fans laugh, as it’s been a running gag for years that Brady’s teammates don’t see his high-five requests.

(I wonder if Brady’s preparations were affected by the restrictions the NFL placed on him meeting with players and coaches because of his upcoming ownership ties to the Raiders. It must add at least a few levels of difficulty, and Brady had few anecdotes about “so-and-so told me about it.”)

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Brady was at his best when focusing on the pass rush, particularly superstars Dallas’ Micah Parsons and Cleveland’s Myles Garrett.

“He intimidates you,” he said of Parsons. “It’s not just what he does after the play, it’s what he does before the play.”

And Brady had Garrett surrounded with the Telestrator just before Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, who was under heavy pressure and seemed to recognize the same thing as Brady, hit Brandin Cooks for an early touchdown.

Brady also had a soft spot for himself and, as always when he was playing, it came across as genuine.

“I’m wrong a lot, believe me,” he said late in the fourth quarter. “Ask my friends.”

Because drawing parallels to Brady’s playing career is irresistible, here’s another. His debut was similar to his 86-yard passing performance in his second career start, a 30-10 loss to the Dolphins in Week 4, 2001.

As you may recall, that season ended much like this one will end for Fox, with a much improved and much more comfortable Tom Brady in the Super Bowl.