Greg Olsen has received a large amount of praise from football fans and media during his two seasons as part of Fox’s top NFL broadcast team alongside Kevin Burkhardt. Count Tom Brady as a big fan of the longtime tight end’s work, as well.
Speaking on «The Pat McAfee Show» on Tuesday, Brady was nothing but complimentary toward Olsen, the man he’s set to replace as Fox’s lead NFL analystnext season.
“Greg’s done an incredible job. I have so much respect for him, how he approaches his job,” Brady said. “He’s super prepared in what he does. I think he does an incredible job every time he’s on, I love listening to him. I’m just going to go in there and do the best I can do with my own perspective.
«I’ve certainly had a unique vision and perspective of the game with 23 years and hopefully I can just provide some insight to all the viewers and all the fans who love the game and love the sport.»
Brady signed a 10-year, $375 million deal in 2022 to join Fox. The future Hall of Famer was set to begin work this past season but decided to wait until 2024 to get going. He told McAfee that he has already done some «dry runs» with Burkhardt to begin the chemistry-building process and get used to being in the broadcast booth calling a game as opposed to being on the field.
The seven-time Super Bowl champion will finish his first season with Fox with a premier game as the network will broadcast Super Bowl LIX from New Orleans in Feb. 2025.
What’s next for Olsen?
As Brady takes Olsen’s chair as part of Fox’s No. 1 team, questions remain as to what Olsen will do. Will he accept a demotion to the No. 2 team or could he move on elsewhere? It’s something that he knew was coming when he took the job.
“That’s the way it looks, from everything we’ve been told and that’s the way it’s been trending,» Olsen told The Athletic this week. «We’ve been planning for that for two years. We knew when we took the job that Brady was there whenever he was going to decide to come.»
“But the one thing I will say is I’m damn proud of what we did for two years. I don’t know any crew — from [Kevin] Burkhardt to Erin [Andrews] and Tom [Rinaldi] to our producer, our whole truck — I don’t know if anyone produces a better football game than we do.”
If Olsen moves on, he would be sports broadcasting’s hottest free agent and we could see some rearranging of personnel if CBS, NBC, ESPN, or Amazon got involved in the bidding for his services.
“It’s hard to predict how all that plays out,” Olsen said. “But my end goal is to call premier games at the top of the ladder and that pursuit won’t change regardless of what happens this next year with my current role.”
