Joe Buck doesn’t think that Drew Brees and Jason Witten got enough time to prove themselves as announcers.
Buck appeared on Richard Deitsch’s “Sports Media” podcast this week, and the two discussed lofty expectations for Tom Brady as he enters the top Fox Sports NFL booth alongside Kevin Burkhardt.
“It’s not fair,” Buck said of the pressure on Brady, as covered by Awful Announcing.
“I think Jason Witten got a bad shake. I think Drew Brees got a raw deal. And if there’s anybody who was ever created in a computer to be a top analyst at a network, I think it’s Drew Brees and I would love to see him get another chance at that. He got one game, and he was working with a new crew and a new play-by-play guy and everybody expects brilliance. You make one comment, and it gets its own life on social media. It’s just ridiculous.”
Witten was a color commentator for one season on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” in 2018, and Brees worked for NBC during the 2021 football season as a color commentator for Notre Dame and studio analyst for “Sunday Night Football.”
Brees also worked a Bengals-Raiders playoff game for NBC that year, and his performance in the booth in that game was heavily critiqued.
Ultimately, NBC brass decided that their original belief that Brees could be an eventual heir apparent for Cris Collinsworth would not pan out.
On the podcast, Buck was essentially expressing the belief that building a successful announcer should be more akin to a slow-cooker than a microwave.
“It takes a while to kinda put your hands up and fend off the punches and just understand what is needed for you to do you job,” he said. “There’s not a lot of grace in the world anymore for, ‘Hey, let’s let somebody just kinda figure it out.’ It’s like, you better be awesome Dallas at Cleveland Week 1 and everybody’s going to form their opinion. That’s ridiculous.”
Buck and Troy Aikman left Fox Sports after 20 years in the NFL booth together to join ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” before the 2022 season.
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