Preparation, Motivation and Growth: How Tom Brady Approached Year 1 in the Booth

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National Football League Preparation, Motivation and Growth: How Tom Brady Approached Year 1 in the Booth
Published
Aug. 11, 2025 10:03 a.m. ET
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If you asked Tom Brady how many perfect passes he made during his playing career, he'd admit that fewer than 5% of his passes each season went exactly the way he wanted them to. The GOAT has also accepted that's the case with broadcasting, too.
In the most recent episode of "The Joel Klatt Show: Big Noon Conversations," Brady and I discussed his first season as FOX Sports' lead NFL analyst. While Brady shared that he felt his first year in the booth went well, he also admitted that he had growing pains, just as anyone would in their rookie season.
As we also discussed Brady's issues with today's college game and Bill Belichick's first season at North Carolina, TB12 pointed out what allowed him to turn the corner as a broadcaster in Year 1, which ended with him calling the Philadelphia Eagles' Super Bowl LIX victory over the Kansas City Chiefs.
Here's a taste of that conversation. You can catch the entirety of it on "The Joel Klatt Show" YouTube channel and wherever you get your podcasts.
(Parts of this conversation were edited and condensed for clarity.)
Joel Klatt: It's clear that championships and being the best motivated you to do all of what you did in your playing career and be the best team player you could be. Now, to cap off your first year here, I want to ask how you feel about broadcasting through your first year in the booth?
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Tom Brady: "I had a great year. I had the best team, and I had so many teammates that helped me through that first year. For me, going into the year, I thought I was prepared because I had done a lot of research, and I had a year to kind of prepare and a lot of practice games. But there was absolutely nothing that I did that could really prepare me for what I was about to endure.
"There was a lot of growing pains through the year for me, just in terms of prep and then obviously going on air and there's things you messed up, and there's things that you make mistakes. It's probably a lot like being an NFL quarterback. You think, 'Hey, I'm prepared, and I got it and I practice.' And then, you go in a real game of your rookie year, and you're like, 'Oh my God, that's a lot different, a lot faster. Where are my eyes? What am I doing?' Then, it gets a little better in Week 2, and a little better in Week 3. And then sometimes you regress a little bit, and sometimes you do things you really like that impress you. And then sometimes, you forgot completely going into Week 9, like, 'How did I do that?' Or 'What were they talking about?'
"By the time I got to the Super Bowl, I was way more comfortable. It was just a really rewarding year. And it wasn't perfect by any means, and I certainly didn't expect it to be perfect. But I'm just excited about now going into Year 2, with one year under my belt, and again, still having people that are on this journey with me that kind of have brought so much joy to my life in my post-career. So it's been really amazing."
Klatt: You capped off your first year with 128 million people watching your game. Meanwhile, I think back to my start in the business. I did a high school football game in Denver that maybe 28 people were watching, just moms, dads and relatives of these high school kids. Were you prepared at all for going through those growing pains in your first year?
Brady: "I think, ironically, for me, I was very fortunate that I played in 10 [Super Bowls]. So there's nothing about the feelings and emotions of preparing for a Super Bowl game that I hadn't been through. So, actually, I felt the most prepared I'd been all season. It was the only time that I had two weeks to prepare for a game, so I actually felt like I was ready to roll, and I felt great.
"When I watched the game back again, it wasn't perfect. I wish I could have gone deeper in some areas or laid out a few times, but I'm like, 'OK, I really was clear with the information. A lot of things were done well, and the game kind of got out of hand at the end of the first half.'
Tom Brady explains why he was the most prepared to call the Super Bowl
"But the best part for me is, I loved it. I enjoyed it. It was kind of like the icing on the cake at the end of the year for our whole crew. And it was a really fun Super Bowl week. The prep was fun, the week was fun and I'm just really excited now to pick up where we started at the end of last year, and I think this year is going to be a great year for us."
Klatt: You were famous for your evaluation. There are stories of the night of the game, by the next morning, you would have an evaluation of the last game and a scouting report for the next team ready for the coaches, and they had to kind of follow you. I'm wondering how did that work ethic work with broadcasting, which is, let's face it, more subjective than objective in terms of, how are you doing, what worked and what didn't work? How did that evaluation that you always poured in jive with that?
Brady: "I think that the tricky part for broadcasting is everybody likes something a little bit different. So it's not like a scoreboard, because the team that has more points on the scoreboard is the winner, and then the one that has less points is the loser. It's easy. I think when you're broadcasting a game, the listener likes something different from everybody. They like your voice. They like your inflection, they like your technical parts."
Klatt: Or they don't like it, in some cases.
Brady: "Or they don't like any of those things. Some like a little teaching. Some like a little entertainment. Some like personal stories. Some might think you're talking too much about yourself. Depending on who you ask, you get a lot of feedback. And that's, I think, the little confusing part. I think what I really settled into was just go do the best you could do and be proud of it, and work hard to prepare and make sure you got good camaraderie and chemistry with your crew, and then go have fun at the game. There's still, again, no real bullseye. So it's not like when you walk out, you're like, 'Man, we crushed it today.' Now, watching back on a lot of the games this offseason, going into this year, there were a lot of games where I got through a first quarter of a game, I was like, 'OK, anybody could have done that.' It's like, where can you really find your niche? When I was a player, where I was really good, I was really good in situational football. I was really good at the end of the half. I was really good at end of games. I was really good at knowing the why of why a team could win or could lose a game.
[Read more from "Big Noon Conversations": Marcus Freeman, Tony Petitti, Best of 2024 season]
"I think I really tried to settle into that late in the year, like what's the bullseye that each team needs to hit to win the game? That's very much how I approach it as a player. So, some of that familiarity as a player really does help me as a broadcaster. Now, the challenging part is, how do you convey all those things to the audience?"
Klatt: Because some of them are hard to communicate.
Brady: "Yeah, it's a really technical game. … Now, when you're an NFL player and you're sitting in a team meeting room talking about the game, the punt team is critical to winning and losing the game because if one team punts at a 45-yard net average, and the other punts at a 35-yard net average, 10 yards per possession over the course of a game is huge. That often correlates to scoring points. And if points are at a premium, one or two points wins a game. Well, that's a difference.
Tom Brady is entering his second season as FOX Sports' lead NFL analyst, calling games alongside Kevin Burkhardt again. (Photo by Nick Cammett/Diamond Images via Getty Images)
"When you're talking about punting as a broadcaster, you don't talk about it. The ball is punted, and you go to commercial, and no one says anything. As a player, you're like, 'Damn, can we get good field position or keep them from getting good field position?' As a broadcaster, it's like, 'Ho hum, change of possession. Let's move on.'
"So there are a lot of little things like that that maybe the viewer can't fully understand or appreciate because there's a production going on for the game as well. And I'm sure you feel that way about a lot of things, because you have a lot more experience than I do."
Klatt: You mentioned earlier that there were things you had left on the table that you wish you had gotten into a little bit deeper. That never changes. There are still things about Ohio State-Michigan last year that I wish I had gotten into, but there just wasn't time. The target in broadcasting, you'll never reach it or hit it. But it's the journey that makes it exciting. The journey and striving toward something that you're really proud of is something that I cherish almost and that's kind of become my competitive lane.
Brady: "Can I say something? Even as a quarterback, for me, as a professional quarterback who played 23 years, and at the end of, let's say, my last three seasons in Tampa, I was throwing 700 passes a season, and I would throw 20 of those passes exactly the way I wanted - with the right arc, the right pace, the right position on the receiver. Twenty of 700, and I worked all year round to get my throwing mechanics the way I wanted. I worked with my receivers. So then you go into broadcasting, and it's like, why would you think you're gonna hit 350 of the 700? In the end, you're probably only gonna hit a limited amount. And I think that's what you're searching for, those parts of the season, or those parts of the game where you're like, 'I really got that.' You don't want to have, you know, these terrible moments where you completely miss it. And I think maybe I was really conscious of that early, and then I got to be a little more freed up as the season went on."
Klatt: What you work for is that those 20 situations happen at the right time, so that in the right moment, on the right third down, the right clock situation, that you were prepared to give your best right there. That's how I view broadcasting. I want to set the table. I actually call it chumming the waters. You throw a bunch of lines in the lake, and then, at some point, my job is to know which line gets grabbed by the game, which I don't know which one it is. Then, can I reel it in? Do I have enough in-depth knowledge of the philosophy of both teams and what's going on with the players and the game situation to reel it in so that the fan really knows what's going on? That's what really excites me is those moments, when you can reel it in with some real depth.
Brady: "That's amazing insight. There are so many ways that it can go. When you start, 'What do I talk about?' There's a ball that's thrown and completed. Do you want to say the guy made a great throw? Do you want to talk about the great route or the great offensive call? Or do you want to talk about the situation? Or do you want to talk about the defensive coverage? Or the blitz that didn't get home. Or the protection that held up? It's a white canvas for you, and it's totally blank, and you get to create it. I think that's the enjoyable part for me. You go into a game and it is a blank slate, and you hope that two teams perform really well. But at the end of the day, they've got to go do it, and you're a complementary piece to this amazing game that we love. The game should be the entertainment and then, just add a little value to the viewer, so that they can understand the game a little bit deeper, and to teach them a little something. So I think those are the parts I probably enjoy the most."
Tom Brady, who is the most prolific passer in NFL history, admitted that very few of his passes were perfect. (Photo by)
Klatt: I'm excited to see that you enjoyed it, because some people don't. Some people get into the broadcast booth and they're like, "Absolutely not. I want no part of that." But to see you latch onto this is cool. My last question is, what motivates you now?
Brady: "What motivates me now? I think it's always the same, and it has been for a long time: I don't want to let people down. People that work with me, and people that I'm involved with and that I commit to, I always want to feel like I come through and I'm ready to go. I want to be the best I could be for them. My FOX team, I don't want to be the broken wheel, so to speak. So I want to come through. I want to work hard. I want to be able to look at myself in the mirror at the end of the day and go, 'Maybe it wasn't the best, but it wasn't because I was not prepared.'
"I prepared my butt off. This is what I want to do. This is what I want to achieve. Whether I hit it or not, like I said, I hit 20 of 700 as a pro who worked on it every day. I'm probably not going to hit it that often, but at least there's a purpose for me waking up every day to go out there and do the best I possibly can. I want to be the best I could be for my kids. I want to be the best I could be for my extended family.
"That's just trying to lead a life of integrity and trying to work hard and be prepared and do all the things that I've been so fortunate to do. I see my life. I'm so blessed in everything that I've been able to do."
Joel Klatt is FOX Sports' lead college football game analyst and the host of the podcast " The Joel Klatt Show. " Follow him at @joelklatt and subscribe to the "Joel Klatt Show" on YouTube .
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