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Before Brady can make real progress, he needs to feel comfortable in the locker room.

By Chad Finn, The Boston Globe

September 9, 2024 | 7:20 a.m.

The reaction I received on Sunday to Tom Brady’s debut as co-commentator for the NFL on Fox was so overly negative that I’m surprised no one wrote to me saying it’s finally time for Drew Bledsoe to take his job.

But the general mood was the same caustic tone. One emailer, who signed his letter JC, actually got a laugh.

“If a potato could talk,” he wrote, “it would sound like Tom Brady.”

Suffice it to say that the seven-time Super Bowl winner and Fox’s $375 million man, who replaced the outstanding Greg Olsen on the network’s No. 1 team alongside Kevin Burkhardt, was not an instant sensation with viewers like CBS’ Tony Romo was seven years ago.

No one should have expected that anyway. As I wrote on Sunday, Brady is a polarizing figure because of his tremendous success against the favorite teams of so many people who now watch him on television.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that many of the people who were criticizing him before the first quarter of the Browns-Cowboys game had already made up their minds 10 minutes before the game started.

But when he had problems – and he did a lot, especially at the beginning – they were ready to pounce on him, mock him, and call him a failure. They really enjoyed it, so much so that everyone seemed to forget that he was someone who had improved time and time again in the past and who, in the end, continued to shine even when people doubted him.

I’ll say it again. Brady will do very well. (Hey, I didn’t mean immediately.)

I’ll also say this: He’s got about 80 yards to go before he gets to the end zone. And this year he’s got to get there – Fox is broadcasting the Super Bowl. All Brady does on the way there is warming up for it.

Brady’s strength will – ultimately – be his ability to immediately recognize and articulate what he sees. The schemes, nuances and subtleties. He missed the opportunity to tell us just after halftime exactly what kind of adjustments the Browns, trailing 20-3, should have made. Instead, he said, “We’ll see if they make adjustments.”

He light could call plays like Romo did in the beginning – Brady hinted several times on Sunday what the Cowboys and Browns were planning – but he will never have that initial winning, frenetic energy. His thing must be real insights into what could happen, and then what happened, and then why it happened.

Before Brady can make any real progress, he needs to get comfortable in the locker room. To do that, he needs to develop a better feel for the tempo, rhythm and speed of a broadcast. In that sense, it might not have been much different than what he felt the first time he stepped on an NFL field as a quarterback.

Burkhardt, the consummate professional, often had to challenge Brady to give his opinion. There were frequent pauses where co-commentators would normally jump in, and Brady really struggled with the rhythm — pausing after every four or five words, almost as if they weren’t coming easily. He didn’t sound like someone who had built a broadcast base from 17 practice games or covered two and a half preseason games.

There were embarrassing moments both at the beginning and at the end of the game, which ended up being a flop – the Cowboys won 33-17. When Burkhardt introduced him to the crowd, Brady responded: “It’s been quite a journey, but I love being your partner.”

That sounded more like the renewal of marriage vows than the opening of a football broadcast.

In the final minute, Brady didn’t seem to know how to finish the game.

“The season is far from over for Cleveland,” he said. “There’s still a lot of football left this season.”

Sure. It’s Week 1, Tom. Even if it is the Browns.

Rules analyst Mike Pereira’s failure to notice Brady offering him a fist bump was dismissed as an embarrassing moment on social media, but Patriots fans probably laughed about it, because Brady’s teammates not noticing his high-five requests was a running joke for years.

(I wonder if Brady’s preparations were affected by the NFL’s restrictions on meeting with players and coaches because of his impending ownership of the Raiders. That must have made things a lot more difficult, and Brady didn’t have many “so-and-so told me” type anecdotes.)

This may not come as a surprise, but Brady was at his best when he focused on the pass rush, particularly against Dallas superstars Micah Parsons and Cleveland’s Myles Garrett.

“He’s intimidating,” he said of Parsons. “It’s not just what he does after the game, but what he does before the game.”

And Brady had circled Garrett with the telestrator just before Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott, under great pressure and apparently realizing the same thing as Brady, hit Brandin Cooks for the early touchdown.

Brady also showed self-irony and seemed, as he did during his active time, sincere.

“I’m wrong a lot, believe me,” he said late in the fourth quarter. “Just ask my friends.”

Since the parallels to Brady’s playing career are obviously irresistible, here’s another one. His debut was comparable to his 86-yard passing performance in his second career start, a 30-10 loss to the Dolphins in Week 4 of 2001.

As you may recall, this season for Fox ended the same way the current one did: with a much improved and more relaxed Tom Brady in the Super Bowl.