Sports Media Expert Boldly Predicts Tom Brady Will Leave Fox Announcing Gig Soon

Tom Brady is in the first year of a lucrative 10-year, $375 million deal with Fox Sports and his acclimation to the broadcast booth has progressed as expected. The seven-time Super Bowl champion operated under an intense microscope for the first several weeks but now everyone seems to have a general idea of what he is and is not behind the microphone. That will ramp up again as the NFL playoffs begin and Brady turns in his year-end report in the form of Super Bowl LIX. While trying to assess how good Brady is on television is a cottage industry, figuring out how long he’ll do it for is a more challenging endeavor—and has been ever since his decade-long contract was announced.

Andrew Marchand of The Athletic, who has been skeptical from the start that Brady would be with Fox for the duration of that 10-season agreement, is out with a new prediction about this marriage’s expiration date. And it’s sooner rather than later:

I’ve previously said I’d put down big money that Brady will not finish his 10-year, $375 million contract with Fox, given all his various business interests away from broadcasting, including ownership. That remains true. The safer prediction would be that Brady walks away from his Fox deal after three or four years. But I’m going bold and saying Brady gets deeper involved with the Las Vegas Raiders in the offseason and decides to go all in with NFL ownership and his production company by the start of the next NFL season.

Perhaps the most surprising thing about such a forecast is that it wouldn’t really be that much of a surprise at all. With the caveat that all of these predictive pieces rely on the author going out on a limb, the fact that it’s conceivable to imagine Brady dipping in for a year and then dipping out is not the greatest sign for all involved.

If that happens, Fox’s decision to demote Greg Olsen for a single, chaotic year of someone learning on the job will look even more dubious. On the other hand, it would free up significant money. Look, Brady loves to compete. And being a part of an organization going for another Super Bowl seems more rewarding than trying to please sports media bloggers for a solid broadcast. It was easy to find predictions that he’d never work a single game for Fox last year and now he’s nearing the end of year one.

We’ll see.