Will Tom Brady be part of the broadcast team of the Super Bowl 2023?
Tom Brady announced his retirement from football at the start of the month. The question now is, will he begin his broadcasting career in the Super Bowl?
Tom Brady announced he would retire for good from football soon after the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were eliminated in the wild-card round by the Dallas Cowboys. His move paves the way for a quick transition to his next career as a broadcaster.
Fox announced last year that the seven-time Super Bowl winner would join their team as the lead football analyst after his retirement. Brady had signed a 10-year, $375 million deal with the network, and now that he has hung up his boots, there is speculation that he could start working for them in the Super Bowl. Fox holds the rights to broadcast the game and could put him on the air immediately.
Per Brady’s contract, he would be replacing Greg Olsen in the booth as number one NFL analyst alongside Kevin Burkhardt. The Olsen-Burkhardt tandem has done excellently as a team this season, and there are questions about throwing the star quarterback immediately into the mix.
READ ALSO:
Too much too soon?
Starting a new role in such a high-profile game barely two weeks after he retired would be a challenge even for the veteran quarterback. New York Post sports analyst Andrew Marchand believes Fox will not risk putting Brady on-air so soon.
“They know it would be stupid and unwise with their $375 million investment to try a three-man setup for the first time with 100 million people watching. If Brady was unsteady, he would immediately create more questions as to why Fox is replacing Olsen with him,” he said.
Brady is therefore not expected to step into Olsen’s shoes next week.
A cameo, perhaps
However, being the top analyst is not the only way that the 45-year-old could make an appearance at the Super Bowl. Veteran sports broadcaster Bob Costas says Brady could still make his TV debut, but in another capacity.
“I would expect that he would be part of their coverage. Not in the game itself, but there’s a six-hour pregame, and then a halftime, and then a postgame, and they’d be very foolish not to want Tom Brady to be front and center as part of that,” Costas told CNN in an interview.
The Super Bowl is just a week away, so we don’t have much to wait to find out if the NFL player widely acknowledged as the football G.O.A.T. will make his on-camera debut sooner than expected.