After announcing his retirement from the NFL last Wednesday, Tom Brady revealed he plans to take a gap year from any job related to football and won’t begin his broadcast gig with Fox until the fall of 2024.
Speaking on Monday with soon-to-be Fox colleague Colin Cowherd on “The Herd,” Brady said he met with Fox executives last week and now intends to take the next 18 months or so to focus on other aspects of his life before making his highly anticipated debut in the booth with the network.
“Decompression is important. You’re on this really crazy treadmill/hamster wheel for a long time, loving the journey and loving the moment, but at the same time there’s a daily fight,” Brady told Cowherd. “I think for me, I want to be great at what I do and even talking last week with the people at Fox Sports and the leadership there allowing me to start my Fox opportunity in the fall of 2024 is something that’s great for me.
“So I’ll take some time to really learn, become great at what I want to do and become great at thinking about the opportunity and making sure I don’t rush into anything.”
Last summer, Brady and Fox agreed to a 10-year, $375 million deal for the seven-time Super Bowl champion to take over as the network’s lead NFL analyst following his retirement. The humongous deal would not actually begin until Brady made clear that he was ready to hang up his jersey and cleats permanently, a decision he said he reached last week when he announced that he was retiring “for good.”
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If Brady isn’t headed into the booth this upcoming fall, Greg Olsen likely will continue in his role as Fox’s lead analyst for the 2023 NFL season. However, Fox–which will air this year’s Super Bowl between the Chiefs and Eagles–also holds the rights to broadcast the Super Bowl after the 2024 campaign, at which point Brady theoretically would have taken on his new role.
