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Was Tom Brady silent, or was he silenced?
While the NFL alum was commentating the face-off between the Philadelphia Eagles and the Los Angeles Rams on Oct. 4—which saw the West Coast team emerge victorious—Brady went suddenly silent while breaking down a play.
His fellow commentator, Kevin Burkhardt, tried to smooth over the gaff by saying, “Sorry Tom, little mic issue. We’ll get back to that and show your protection lesson in a moment.”
Thankfully, Brady’s voice was only cut off for a few moments, with the Patriots alum soon noting, “Alright, I’m back, everyone, had a little technical difficulties.”
But while the moment appeared to be a typical audio glitch, upon returning from commercial break, Burkhardt wanted Brady to admit what really caused the fumble.
“You want to fess up?” he asked Brady. “The mic issue?”
To which the 49-year-old admitted, “Okay, my fault.”
The NFL Hall of Famer then held up an oversized black folder to the camera, adding, “I have this big, clunky board, which I have all this information about what I want to say all day and I dropped it on the talkback button.”
Unaware of his error in the moment, however, Brady had thought the source of the audio issue lay elsewhere.
“I’m sitting here going, ‘God, I can’t hear anyone, you guys?’” he recalled. “And it’s my fault the whole time. So that’s like a quarterback owning up to his mistake.”
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The on-air mistake comes four years into Brady’s 10-year deal with Fox Sports. Upon his second and official retirement from the NFL, in 2022 the former quarterback signed a decade-long commentating deal with the network, totaling $375 million.
And he isn’t the only former NFL star to turn to on-air coverage after hanging up their helmet—nor the first to apologize.
Recently, former Eagles player Jason Kelce found himself forgetting his time on the field was officially behind him while covering the Philadelphia team’s game against the Chicago Bears on Sept. 28.
“I feel pretty good going into the half,” Jason told fellow analysts Pat McAfee and Scott Van Pelt during SPN’s Monday Night Football. “We played really well.”
“Offensively, we had opportunities, we shot ourselves in the foot, but we’ve moved the ball, we ran the ball well, Jalen Hurts is throwing the ball well,” he continued. “Them getting the ball coming out of the half, I have a feeling they got a lot of momentum.”
But McAfee quickly picked up that Kelce wasn’t acting as an impartial judge, teasing, “A lot of ‘we’ talk out of Jason for Philly.”
And the New Heights host quickly copped to his misstep.
“Sorry, sorry. I forget,” Kelce admitted. “Sorry, Bears fans.”
As for what the likes of Brady, Kelce and more on-air personalitise rake in as commentators, read on.
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