Drew Brees' reported new Fox gig provides a much better chance for him as a booth analyst

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Fox reportedly tabs Drew Brees to replace Mark Sanchez, and puts him in a position to succeed

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Many athletes have faced challenges going directly from the field to the announcing booth. One example often cited is Drew Brees, who officially joined NBC in 2021 (following his retirement from the NFL after the 2020 season, but he'd reportedly already agreed to a NBC deal before that final season) as a Notre Dame booth analyst and a NFL studio analyst. But Brees was tabbed to call a NFL playoff game that season, took a lot of criticism for his performance, and then left NBC after the season.

Since then, Brees has frequently talked about how much he wants to call games, but he's only had limited opportunities to make that happen. But he already had one game-broadcasting chance lined up this year with Netflix for Christmas Day (he was on their international feed last year, but looks set for the U.S. feed this year), and he's done a lot of studio work, including guesting across multiple NFL on Fox studio shows in Week 3. And now, Andrew Marchand of The Athletic has reported that Brees will join the NFL on Fox as a full-time game analyst for this season and beyond:

While it's unusual for someone to get a second game-analyst chance after a highly-criticized performance such as Brees' January 2022 one, this specific setup makes sense on several levels. For one, Fox needs someone. As Marchand notes, this comes with Mark Sanchez still sidelined following the October incident that saw him hospitalized and charged with felony battery. (I wrote about how well Brady Quinn stepped in on less than 24 hours notice here.) Since then, his usual spot alongside Adam Amin has been vacant; Greg Olsen slid over there for a few weeks during the baseball postseason thanks to his usual play-by-play partner Joe Davis' MLB responsibilities, but that's over now. And Marchand notes later in that piece that Brees is expected to join Amin weekly, at least for the moment.

The larger picture is that Brees not only has much more broadcasting experience now than he did in 2021-22, but that he's being given a better introductory role. As I wrote in that above piece on Quinn, Fox and CBS have a great bench advantage amongst NFL broadcasters thanks to the numerous regional games they have each week. The games Amin is calling, with either Sanchez or Brees, go to only a portion of the country (plus those watching on NFL Sunday Ticket). That's a great place for a game analyst to start, and a much better one than the spotlight of a NFL playoff game that Brees was thrust into. (Yes, he was calling Notre Dame games before that, but that's a bad enough spotlight in its own right, and while college game analyst experience is useful, it's not completely translatable to NFL game analysis.) Similarly, a lot of the issues with Tom Brady's Fox broadcasting work so far have come just from the massive spotlight he's been thrust into on their top game each week, to say nothing of the Super Bowl. He's improving, but it takes reps and time.

While it remains rare to see someone get a second chance like this, there are lots of reasons to think this particular move with Brees might work. First, networks (especially Fox) are still putting lots of value on former quarterbacks, and Brees' resume there remains one of the best. Brees is also still quite liked by many NFL fans, especially here in New Orleans (and the Saints are usually on Fox thanks to that network's NFC-focused package). And Brees has shown an ability to break down NFL concepts well in non-game broadcast forums, and he's made it quite clear game broadcasting is something he still wants to do. Working on a regional team at Fox is quite a reasonable way to approach that goal, much more so than being thrown into the deep end on a playoff broadcast. We'll see how he does, but it makes sense why both he and Fox would make this move at this time.

Questions? Comments? Hit me up at andrew@andrewbucholtz.com. Programming note: I'll be in San Diego Thursday-Monday, helping to run the SDHistCon Summit historical gaming convention, so there probably won't be much here during that time, but I have several cool things already in the works for my return.