Drew Brees will make it to the Hall of Fame. The real question is whether he’ll make it back into a broadcast booth.
His one year at NBC didn’t work out. Though I have no information about what happened, it seems as if he preferred being at games not in the studio (it is a very different existence) and that there simply wasn’t a spot for him in the booth, given the limited package of NBC games.
Joe Buck, long-time NFL play-by-play announced with Fox and more recently ESPN, believes Brees should get another chance.
“I think Drew Brees got a raw deal,” Buck said on Richard Deitsch’s Sports Media podcast. “And if there’s anybody who was ever created in a computer to be a top analyst at a network, I think it’s Drew Brees and I would love to see him get another chance at that. . . . He got one game, and he was working with a new crew and a new play-by-play guy and everybody expects brilliance. You make one comment, and it gets its own life on social media. It’s just ridiculous.”
Technically, he got a full season of Notre Dame games, and two NFL games: Thanksgiving night in New Orleans and then the Raiders-Bengals playoff game. It was the latter that landed on the wrong side of pass-fail, and that expedited a conscious uncoupling.
Could Brees get a mid-level spot at CBS or Fox and work his way up the ladder? If he wanted it, probably. Given his career earnings and off-field business acumen, the compensation might not be worth disconnecting on 20 weekends from his family.
Yes, Brees could excel in the job with opportunity and experience. The problem is that there aren’t enough high-paying seats to afford that room to grow at a price that makes it worth his while.
As fellow future Hall of Famer Tom Brady prepares to embark on his own broadcasting adventurer, it’s important to remember that there are no guarantees when it comes to great player sliding into a broadcast booth. That said, if Brady’s $375 million over 10 years is essentially guaranteed, he’ll get plenty of time to get to his ceiling, wherever it might be.
