Rob Gronkowski and Tom Brady spent 11 seasons together as teammates between both New England and Tampa Bay. So, one might think that Gronkowski would sugarcoat his thoughts on Brady’s first game in the broadcasting booth with Fox.
But that wasn’t exactly the case, and you know what — it makes sense that Gronk can be honest about Brady.
Brady made his broadcasting debut on Sunday alongside Kevin Burkhardt. And though Brady’s debut wasn’t a disaster, it wasn’t great by any means. At times, the seven-time Super Bowl champion sounded nervous and struggled with regular sentence structure and syntax. There were weird pauses, and we didn’t get the substantial analysis that you’d expect from the best quarterback to ever play.
So, when asked for his thoughts on Brady’s first game with Fox, Gronk was fair in his critique.
In an interview with Kay Adams, Gronk described Brady’s debut as “definitely a rookie debut.”
He said:
“He was like a quarterback that was picked No. 1 overall — all the hype in the world. And he came through. He did come through, but he had a lot of jitters — that’s for sure. Not a lot, but he had some jitters. He made some great plays. There were some plays that he missed, I feel like. … So, he’s got a lot to learn.”
And honestly, that’s a reasonable take on Brady’s performance. The knowledge and potential is certainly there to be an elite broadcaster, but Brady has a lot to learn about the craft. He should get better with time and reps, but it’s still a bummer that an exceptional talent like Greg Olsen got demoted for Brady.
