Every year, we fascinate over what we’re going to get from highly touted rookie NFL quarterbacks. We debate them and scrutinize them, doubt them and project them. It’s all in an effort to anticipate what they can be — or more often than not, can’t be — at the next level.
In some respects, this is the reception that awaits elite NFL players who are making the transition to the broadcast booth. Can they be efficient? Will they understand the fundamentals of the job? Can they carry skills over from one landscape to the next? Can they “wow” us? And perhaps most important of all: Can they be great?
For the first time in decades, Tom Brady is facing these questions again.
In roughly three months, we’ll start to get answers when Brady enters the booth for his first game as an NFL analyst on Sept. 8, taking the lead chair for Fox in a season-opening matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and Cleveland Browns. That will be the moment when the seven-time Super Bowl winner officially pushes off into his football career after his football career, definitively taking his first shot at a pressing question: What will this next iteration of Brady be?
Of course, the journey through his “gap year” from his playing days to the booth hasn’t come without some breadcrumbs along the way. There were moments that included Brady lamenting the “mediocrity” he believes has crept into the NFL, as well as posting a critical social media comment about quarterbacks needing to “throw the ball to the right places” after Indianapolis Colts wideout Michael Pittman Jr. was leveled on a less-than-ideal pass from Gardner Minshew against the Pittsburgh Steelers last season. For those who have paid attention, Brady has showcased a willingness to share blunt opinions about the state of the league and its quarterback play, possibly foreshadowing what can be expected in his broadcasting career.
And he was no less candid Wednesday, when he spoke to Yahoo Sports while making the rounds for…
Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/tom-brady-the-analyst-he-has-a-strong-opinion-quarterbacking-has-gone-backwards-in-the-nfl-043212573.html
Author : Yahoo Sports
Publish date : 2024-06-13 04:32:12
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