The Patriots lost 45-27 to the Packers on November 8, giving up the most points they have ever allowed at Gillette Stadium, and the quarterback who threw three interceptions in it, Drake Maye, is now tied with the Chargers’ Justin Herbert for the most interceptions in the NFL this season, 11 in nine games. The same afternoon produced a second, smaller data point: it was the first time Tom Brady called a Patriots game from the Fox booth, and the mismatch between the game he was watching and the one fans wanted him to narrate made for an unusually clean demonstration of what a $375 million, ten-year broadcasting contract is actually buying.
Fox signed Brady to that deal in May 2022, a figure awfulannouncing.com reported is the largest in sports-broadcasting history, worth $37.5 million a year. That annual number by itself exceeds Brady’s $332.96 million in career NFL player salary divided over his 20 playing seasons, roughly $16.6 million a year on average. He delayed the start by a season to finish with Tampa Bay, then spent two seasons calling other teams’ games before Fox finally sent him to Foxborough in his third year on the job — the network had been routing its top crew elsewhere while the Patriots went 14-2 and reached Super Bowl LX without enough prime-time slots to justify the trip, as the Globe noted in its preview of the assignment.
What went wrong, in order
Maye threw his first interception on New England’s second offensive play, intercepted by Packers safety Xavier McKinney at the Patriots’ 14-yard line. McKinney added a second pick later; Evan Williams got the third. Jordan Love answered with 372 passing yards and three touchdowns, and Christian Watson set a career high with 171 receiving yards on seven catches, according to NESN’s recap. Maye finished 21 of 38 for 299 yards and three touchdowns of his own, but the three turnovers in a first half he’d largely avoided over his previous four games — one interception total in that stretch, per the Portland Press Herald — are what pushed him level with Herbert atop the league’s interception count.
Reviewing the game in his first outing from the Fox booth, alongside play-by-play announcer Kevin Burkhardt, Brady did what he’s been building toward across two seasons of analyst work: he waited for the replay before he spoke. On the first interception, Chad Finn wrote in the Globe, Brady said nothing for 48 seconds, presumably watching the tape, then came back with the specific mechanical failure — receiver Mack Hollins pulling up on his route while Maye threw to where the route was supposed to be. “There’s a little bit of indecision on both their parts,” Brady said, “and that’s what leads to turnovers.” That’s the distinction an analyst is paid to draw: not that a pass was bad, but which of the two players on the route broke the shared assumption first.
The same pattern showed up on Maye’s better throws. After a 36-yard completion to DeMario Douglas, Brady credited offensive coordinator Josh McDaniels’s scheme rather than Maye’s arm, pointing out that McDaniels uses Maye’s mobility to let him work outside the pocket in both directions — something, Brady noted about his own 20 seasons in that building, he never had to offer a defensive line. “That helps the offensive line because the defensive line doesn’t just bear down on the middle of the pocket like they did for all those years when I was back there,” he said. It’s a small, verifiable claim about how mobility changes a pass rush’s leverage, not a compliment.
The rest of the booth
Brady’s habits as a broadcaster are now specific enough to list. He reacts to a play before the broadcast confirms what happened — he yelped “Oh!” on the first interception before McKinney had even caught the ball, and did it again on the third. He still gets grammar wrong in ways that are becoming a signature rather than a flaw: wrong tenses, singular for plural, and on air he described cornerback Christian Gonzalez turning “his bum” toward the sideline, almost certainly not the word he meant. He’s also started editing his own language live — asked to sign a Topps Now card commemorating his return, he said, “I’m glad there’s no statistics on the back showing how many times I’ve cursed on air this year.”
Off the broadcast, Brady’s tone split along a line that tracked the current roster against the 2016 team being honored at the game, part of a ceremony around Rob Gronkowski’s induction into the Patriots Hall of Fame. He told Fox colleague Erin Andrews he was “the luckiest man alive to play for this unbelievable community,” and called former teammate Matthew Slater “the greatest special teamer ever to play,” according to AOL’s report on his pregame comments. That warmth didn’t extend to the current team: Brady was described, in exchanges with a Packers player after the game, as taking what multiple outlets characterized as a pointed jab at Maye over the three interceptions, though no outlet has published the exact words.
The verdict he actually gave
Asked by Burkhardt late in the blowout how he sees the Patriots, Brady gave an answer built on a real split in the season’s results rather than a reaction to one bad half. “Half the season they played like this,” he said. “And half the season they haven’t turned the ball over, haven’t exposed the ball to the defense, have played physical on defense, and they played well.” He framed the question going forward as which version shows up: “Right now, [they’re] just inconsistent, and which team are they going to get? The team that’s loose with the ball, loose with decision-making, and can be getting beat by anybody? Or are you a team that takes care of the football, makes the other team play lefthanded in what they want to do, and then you become very tough to beat, a lot like they were last season?”
That’s a testable claim, not a mood. New England’s turnover margin and takeaway rate on defense over its next several games will show which Patriots team Brady’s $37.5-million-a-year analysis was describing — and whether Maye’s 11 interceptions in nine games stay the league’s floor or get company.