Greg Olsen is encouraging Tom Brady to sign a five-year deal with an NFL team so he can keep his job in Fox Sports’ No. 1 game booth.
During an appearance on “The Waddle and Silvy” radio show on ESPN 1000 Tuesday, Olsen said it would “suck” if Brady — who signed a 10-year, $375 million deal with Fox Sports in 2022 to become its lead NFL analyst — retired this offseason to take over his job in the booth alongside Kevin Burkhardt.
“We all know the reality,” Olsen said. “I know what I signed up for this year. My goal — and I said this before the season even started — my goal was to try to do the best job that I could. Give people a fun listen. Give people maybe a little bit of a different perspective and insight into the game. Do the best job that I can.
“Listen, if Brady ends up retiring and coming, and decides, and that’s how everything unfolds, it sucks. But at the end of the day, I’m a big boy. I know what I signed up for. I took a chance on myself. I rolled the dice. Let’s see how it plays out.”
Olsen and Burkhardt have been Fox’s top NFL broadcast team since Joe Buck and Troy Aikman left for ESPN prior to the 2022 season. The duo has gotten solid reviews for its work this season and will call the NFC Championship game between the Eagles and 49ers on Sunday, as well as Super Bowl 2023 for Fox.
“I’m looking forward to calling this game this weekend,” Olsen said. “Hopefully, people enjoy it as much as they have these last couple games. And that obviously culminates in a few weeks in the Super Bowl. So, I’m just going to enjoy these last couple weeks.
“They’ve been busy, but they’ve been a blast. And then whatever happens in the offseason, listen, I hope Brady signs a five-year deal with somebody. I’ll be the first guy there. I’ll give ’em some cap room to make it work. We’ll cross that bridge when we get there, I guess.”
As for Brady? The Buccaneers quarterback, who turns 46 in August, is still contemplating whether he will continue playing for a 24th season, or retire for good following Tampa Bay’s season-ending loss to the Cowboys in the wild-card round.
During the latest installment of his SiriusXM “Let’s Go” podcast, Brady became agitated when his co-host Jim Gray asked about his playing future.
“Jim, if I knew what I was going to f–king do, I would have already f–king done it,” Brady said. “I’m taking it a day at a time.”
In November, Buck said that “there’s so much up in the air in his life right now” while discussing Brady’s future with Fox Sports. That came nearly a month after Brady confirmed that he and his wife, supermodel Gisele Bündchen, finalized their divorce after 13 years of marriage.
“I know there are people at Fox who would say there’s a chance that he doesn’t call a game there,” Buck said at the time.
The next week, Burkhardt said that Olsen told Brady during a Fox production meeting ahead of a Buccaneers game: “‘Tom, I gotta tell ya, this TV thing sucks.’ It was great, we were dying laughing. It was fun, we had a good back and forth.”
Olsen and Burkhardt’s chemistry has proven to be successful for Fox Sports, whose veteran sideline reporter Erin Andrews has gushed about working with the announcing duo.
ESPN NFL analyst Dan Orlovsky also expressed admiration for Olsen in the booth during Sunday’s Cowboys-49ers Divisional Round game.
“Greg Olsen is the fantastic calling NFL games weekly,” Orlovsky tweeted. “Aspire to get to where he is. Prepared. Timely. Smart. Teaches. Story tells. Don’t make it about him but about the game. Tremendous.”
