Like many veteran quarterbacks, rookie broadcaster Tom Brady apparently doesn’t need to work in the preseason.
The new Fox No. 1 analyst isn’t in the booth for the network’s lone 2024 exhibition game, Saints at 49ers. Brady is nevertheless in the building, presumably working another practice game in advance of his formal debut, three weeks from today for Cowboys at Browns.
And it’s not the No. 2 Fox team, either. In lieu of Joe Davis and Greg Olsen, Adam Amin and Mark Sanchez have the call. For Amin, it made for a busy weekend; he called Saturday’s Bengals-Bears game.
Olsen’s presence at the game would make an awkward situation even more of the same, especially since he has won the last two Sports Emmys in the category Brady will now invade, after taking Olsen’s job.
Networks often assign their top booths to their preseason games. Why not give Brady a trial run, especially if he’s calling a preseason game anyway?
If nothing else, Brady’s presence would get more people to tune in to see how he does in the job. The other side of the coin, however, is that he’d potentially be criticized on social media for anything/everything social media wants to complain about. (That’s going to happen anyway, once he starts calling games.)
The whole thing feels like a missed opportunity at best, a not-so-subtle message that preseason is beneath Brady at worst. Regardless, unless he pays a visit to the No. 3 Fox booth during the game, we won’t see or hear him until Week 1.