Tom Brady Says He'll Begin Fox NFL Broadcasting Role Starting with 2024 Season

Tom Brady will make his transition from NFL quarterback to broadcaster, but not before taking a gap year.

The future Hall of Famer told Colin Cowherd on Monday that he plans to begin broadcasting NFL games for Fox Sports starting in the 2024 season (h/t Field Yates of ESPN).

Brady, 45, announced his retirement from the NFL last week:

The seven-time champion briefly retired last offseason before deciding he wasn't quite ready to call it quits, which has some people around the NFL wondering if Brady might pull a similar trick this winter.

"You are telling me Brady is going to be calling San Francisco at Jacksonville next season and he is going to be looking down to the field at Trey Lance and Trevor Lawrence and it's going to be a 7-7 game in the second quarter and he is going to be sitting there saying, 'I'm where I should be, in Jacksonville's press box?'" a veteran coach told Mike Sando of The Athletic. "He has played too well, too recently. I just don't buy it."

Those comments came before Brady announced he would be putting his broadcasting career on hold until the 2024 season. But the general point holds: Will Brady, a football junkie, really be able to stay away if the right situation presents itself for him to play at least one more year?

Another NFL executive saw things a bit differently, however.

"I'm sure he knows all of his (current) options and would rather do this," that person told Sando. "I truly think he got to the point where he wanted to retire last year, he just didn't know how. Last year and this year showed him the fantasy of going out on top is probably gone. Given where his kids are in New York and Miami, there are only a handful of places he could maybe play. Does he want to start over and do all that?"

Brady had a solid season in 2022, throwing for 4,694 yards, 25 touchdowns and nine interceptions while completing 66.8 percent of his passes and taking only 22 sacks. For most quarterbacks around the NFL, those would be stellar numbers. But for Brady, it was something of a regression, at least compared to his first two seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And his team went only 8-9 in the process, barely limping into the postseason before being blown out by the Dallas Cowboys in the Wild Card Round, 31-14.

Brady is likely standing on the precipice of going out at a time when he was still playing at a decently high level, even if his final season ended in disappointment. If he unretires again, though, he risks sticking around for one season too long and seeing his quality of play fall off a cliff. It's often hard to predict when decline will hit, or just how steep it will be.

His initial reaction has been to call it quits, and seemingly to take a year for himself before jumping back into football as a broadcaster. But that gap year is going to keep open the possibility that he could decide at some point to play one more year after all.