By Joe Flint

Tom Brady will be a Super Bowl rookie on Sunday. Again.

The legendary quarterback, who won seven Super Bowls with the New England Patriots and Tampa Bay Buccaneers, will call his first big game today as the analyst alongside play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt.

The scrutiny and pressure Brady faced as a quarterback was more intense than his rookie season in the broadcast booth, but not by much, as media analysts picked apart his $37.5 million-a-year performance every week.

Early in the season, Wall Street Journal sports columnist Jason Gay wrote that Brady the analyst was "a little all over the place" with awkward interjections and thoughts just trailing off mid-sentence.

John Ourand, sports columnist for Puck, said Brady didn't communicate clearly and the audience ended up with "an overly sanitized version of one of the most competitive athletes to ever set foot on the gridiron."

In an interview with reporters Wednesday, Brady acknowledged he made "plenty of mistakes" and added that he's pretty sure there will be more going forward. "But every time that I make one, I'm going to try to learn from it and be better for it," he said. "I've really enjoyed the learning curve."

For his part, Burkhardt is enjoying the moment as he gets to know Brady in this new setting. "I wasn't being followed around by people taking pictures going to dinner necessarily before," he said. "It's been cool."

This item is part of a Wall Street Journal live coverage event. The full stream can be found by searching P/WSJL (WSJ Live Coverage).

(END) Dow Jones Newswires

February 09, 2025 17:33 ET (22:33 GMT)

Copyright (c) 2025 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.