Tom Brady’s $375 million broadcasting gig with Fox is going to be very tough and tricky, especially with all the restrictions placed on him. After becoming a minority owner of the Las Vegas Raiders, Brady is now forbidden from being in another team’s facilities or watching another team practice. He would also be forced to miss out on broadcast production meets, which would definitely hamper his role as an analyst.
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Steelers legend Ben Roethlisberger finds these restrictions quite baffling. On the latest episode of Footbahlin with Ben Roethlisberger, the two-time Super Bowl champ acknowledged the rules but couldn’t see how Brady would be able to broadcast efficiently through the restrictions.
Roethlisberger explained from his experience in Pittsburgh how the broadcasting production teams would attend the team’s practice and make notes, which helped them give meaningful insights during the game’s commentary. However, as a minority owner of the Raiders, Brady won’t have that opportunity, leaving Roethlisberger to wonder how this arrangement will work.
“But they (commentators) need to watch and see things so that they have something to talk about like, ‘Oh yeah, we saw in practice X, Y and Z happened’ or ‘We saw that play in practice… Those seem like some crazy restrictions… Fox has to be a little bit like, ‘What are we doing here?’.”
“That seems tricky to me. I don’t understand all of it and how it’s going to work,” he continued.
While Roethlisberger didn’t seem to be a fan of the arrangement, he understood where the league was coming from in imposing such restrictions on Brady — all except for one rule.
Roethlisberger disagrees with this restriction imposed on Brady
During the podcast, co-hosts, Jerrad Slopes and Spencer listed down the rules that Brady would have to abide by in his new role in Las Vegas, to which Roethlisberger reacted one by one. When it came to prohibitions against visiting another team’s facilities, broadcast production meetings, or witnessing their practice, the quarterback expressed his agreement by saying, “Makes sense.”
However, when it came to Brady being restricted from “publicly criticizing” the referees and the other teams, Roethlisberger replied, “Disagree with that.”
This particular rule would arguably make the former QB’s job either incredibly tough or incredibly drab, as expressing opinions about the teams playing the game, be it positive or negative, is a crucial part of a broadcaster’s job.
With Tom Brady embarking on his new business venture alongside his role at Fox, only time will tell how this season will turn out for the former NFL legend.
