Humiliation for Tom Brady as NFL commentator he kicked out of Fox booth beats him to Sports Emmy win

Tom Brady was left red faced on Tuesday night as he lost a Sports Emmy award to the man he brutally replaced in the Fox commentary booth.

The seven-time Super Bowl winner will enter the third of his 10-year, $375million contract with the network to call its top NFL games in September.

But when Brady took over before the start of the 2024 season, Fox made the decision to ruthlessly ditch former Carolina Panthers, Chicago Bears and Seattle Seahawks tight end Greg Olsen.

In the years before Brady’s arrival, Olsen forged a reputation among fans and within the NFL as one of the top color commentators in the business. 

He worked alongside play-by-play commentator Kevin Burkhardt, who now sits across from Brady, between 2022 and 2023 and they successfully called the Super Bowl between the Kansas City Chiefs and Philadelphia Eagles in 2023.

But, despite getting the major high-profile games, Brady was beaten by Olsen to the prize of Outstanding Personality/Event Analyst at the Sports Emmys awards on Tuesday.

Brady replaced Olsen as Fox’s No. 1 color commentator, despite his impressive track record

Brady wasn’t even nominated after his first year behind the microphone with Peyton Manning beating Olsen and others to the prize in 2025.

That wasn’t surprising given Brady divided opinion in his first season as a commentator, which ended with him calling a Super Bowl between the Chiefs and Eagles.

However, his second year was much improved and he started to win round critics as the season went on. 

Back in January Brady revealed the changes he made in a desperate quest to change his fortunes as an NFL analyst. He admitted that he would overload himself with countless sheets of notes that would hinder his natural actions.

‘I used to say, “All the stuff I prepared, I could read from start to finish in a three-hour broadcast, and I wouldn’t get through all the information,”‘ Brady told The Athletic.

His reliance on his notes, which he called ‘TMI’ (too much information), meant Brady couldn’t react quickly and naturally to the action that was unfolding in front of him, limiting the insight viewers would be tuning in for.

This year, Brady said that he tried to approach broadcasting like a quarterback, changing his outlook on the job.

‘I started to transition this year into, “Let me do more of how I did it as a quarterback,” because that’s really where my comfort is,’ Brady said during his interview with The Athletic. ‘As opposed to, ‘Let me try to prepare as a broadcaster.”

Brady massively improved during the second year of his $375million, 10-year deal with Fox

Brady also made slight tweaks and changes in the booth to facilitate his partnership with co-commentator Kevin Burkhardt. 

He had the telestrator moved from the outside of the booth to between him and Burkhardt to facilitate a more natural flow of conversation.

The move meant that the pair were no longer having to turn their backs on one another to view the monitor for replays.

For now, Olsen continues to be Fox’s No. 2 analyst with play-by-play caller Joe Davis as he waits for the possibility of a top job opening up elsewhere. He would certainly be a leading candidate for any other network.