Mike Francesa is bearish on Tom Brady’s prospects as a broadcaster.
Brady, presuming he doesn’t mount an NFL comeback, is slated to join Kevin Burkhardt as the analyst on the top Fox Sports announcer team this season.
In a listener email segment on his BetRivers podcast Thursday, Francesa was asked if he thinks Brady will be any good.
“No. I don’t,” Francesa said, as covered by Awful Announcing.
“I don’t think his heart’s in it. I don’t think his personality is such. I don’t think he’s going to be great at it. I really don’t. I think there’s a unique quality that you have to bring that allows you as an analyst to see the game, see the game quickly, plus bring personality into it.
“It’s a tricky job for the analyst in football because you’re going to spend a lot of time over replay. You’re going to spend a lot of time breaking down what happens on replay. And you also have to be very personable and glib in how you do it. I don’t see him there.”
Former Post columnist Andrew Marchand reported in 2022 that Fox Sports will pay Brady $375 million over 10 years.
On his podcast, Francesa also said that Brady being a part-owner of the Raiders will “impact him as a broadcaster” and reiterated that he doesn’t believe the former quarterback “has the personality” to excel at the job.
“There’s certain guys who are good,” Francesa said.
“Now, Peyton Manning would’ve been really good as an analyst. But, he’s better just being Peyton [on “ManningCast”] because he is in his own right a TV personality. He’s great in TV, he’s great in commercials, he’s good at everything he does. I think he’d be fine as an analyst, but he’s just better being himself.”
While Francesa was the under the impression Brady’s Raiders stake was complete, the latest reporting was that the finalization was making progress but had not happened yet.
Once Brady is officially a part owner, he would not be allowed to return to playing in the NFL without divesting his stake in the team.
Francesa acknowledged that his predictions on who will be good on TV are not always sacrosanct, as he’s come around on Troy Aikman, who works with Joe Buck on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” after the duo previously worked for two decades together at Fox.
“I didn’t think early on Aikman had the personality to be a terrific analyst, but he’s come at it almost in a different way, but it’s worked really well,” Francesa said.
“He’s really good at it. It’s almost like he brings kind of a Cowboy way of doing things to it, but it works. He’s got a sense of humor, but he doesn’t go crazy thinking he’s a comedian. He takes it seriously, and you can sense that.
“And the fact that he had so much success as a player makes him look at things and say, ‘You gotta be better at this.’ Because he knows what it takes, and he was part of something special, and he was that kind of perfectionist as a player. I think he’s become very good, without having that incredible personality, he’s still become very good at it.”
