New England Patriots
“Excuse me. I was not expecting to see that.”
Tom Brady — like the millions who were watching on Sunday — was aghast when Commanders QB Jayden Daniels suffered a gruesome elbow injury during Washington’s game against the Cowboys.
The only difference is Brady is now the color commentator for Fox’s top NFL broadcasting team — and was on air when he couldn’t mask his shock at Daniels’ injury.
Just before halftime in an eventual 37-20 loss for Washington, Daniels suffered a serious elbow injury in which the joint appeared to bend the wrong way just as he was trying to brace himself while falling.
A slow-motion replay showed the severity of the injury, with both Brady and Fox Sports play-by-play voice Kevin Burkhardt reacting in real time to Daniels’ elbow bending in brutal fashion.
“Oh s—,” Brady said while watching the replay before correcting himself. “Excuse me. I was not expecting to see that. … Oh man, [he] tries to brace himself with his left elbow.”
Daniels, 25, suffered a dislocated left elbow on the play, according to Commanders head coach Dan Quinn. He was quickly ruled out for the remainder of the game and was replaced by backup QB Marcus Mariota.
The former LSU star — who was taken one pick (No. 2 overall) ahead of Drake Maye in the 2024 NFL Draft — suffered a similar elbow dislocation last season in a game against Seattle, missing four weeks of game action. He later returned, but reinjured his elbow while attempting to make a tackle after throwing an interception in Week 14 against the Vikings.
Brady is now in his third year as a broadcaster for Fox Sports, while also serving as a partial owner of the Las Vegas Raiders. He initially joined Fox on a 10-year, $375 million contract.
Speaking to Sports Business Journal earlier this month, Brady said that he’s interested in broadcasting beyond his current contract with Fox.
“I have a lot to prove to myself, to my teammates. I have a lot to prove to the executives,” Brady told SBJ’s Richard Deitsch and Austin Karp. “I want to go earn it and I don’t want anything given to me. I hope they’ll have me through the end of this contract. I love getting to enjoy the game.
“I love watching good football. There’s such great camaraderie and chemistry we all have together. We have seminars. We have off-site retreats. We have text threads with all of us. It feels like a big family in so many ways, and I was not really expecting that when I decided to take the job.”
As part of his interview with SBJ, Brady also pushed back against criticism over both his broadcasting skills and the potential conflict of interest that comes with calling games against the league while also serving on one team’s ownership group.
“It’s clickbait for people and it’s something that people have no idea what they’re really glomming onto,” Brady added. “They just put it out there in the world and see what sticks. So to me, I just focus on what I need to do to be prepared. That’s what I did as a player, and I go out there every week as a broadcaster and try to do the same thing.”
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