Greg Olsen opens up on difficult season in the booth after being demoted for Tom Brady at Fox Sports

Once Fox Sports’ top NFL analyst, retired Carolina Panthers tight end Greg Olsen is now opening up about his difficult 2024 season after being demoted by the network in favor of Tom Brady.

As the 39-year-old told The Athletic in an eye-opening Q&A, he doesn’t resent Brady after being passed over by the seven-time Super Bowl champion on Fox’s depth chart. But he does miss calling the NFL’s biggest games, such as Super Bowl LIX in New Orleans, where Brady will be in the booth to cap off the first season of his reported 10-year, $375 million deal.

‘I don’t think resentment’s probably accurate,’ Olsen told The Athletic. ‘But I also think it’s not too far off if I’m being honest.

‘I don’t have any ill will — there’s no personal resentment towards Tom or, obviously, K.B. [Kevin Burkhardt] and Erin [Andrews]. I still talk to all of them fairly regularly. I’m hoping to see them next week down in New Orleans and grab dinner or a drink and just kind of shoot the s***, catch up.

‘But yeah, it’s hard to sit there and watch games that over the last couple of years you were preparing for, and you were calling,’ Olsen continued. ‘And then you’re sitting there on your couch and you’re watching the game, you’re almost kind of broadcasting the game in your brain. 

‘You’re saying, ”Oh, man, what would I have said on this play? There was so much to talk about there. That would’ve been super fun to dive into.”

Olsen was in the booth a few years ago when the Kansas City Chiefs first played the Philadelphia Eagles in the Super Bowl. Now, with the two teams meeting again on February 9, he will again be sidelined, just as he was during the NFC Championship on Sunday in Philly.

‘It’s very hard now to watch the games and just sit back and watch,’ said Olsen, who has taken to commenting about games on X.

‘It’s fun doing it every week, and certain weeks are better than others,’ he continued on the topic of calling top games. ‘But after the last couple years, our real marquee moments were those playoff games and NFC championships.

‘And obviously, this rematch of the Super Bowl two years ago came right down to the wire and was one of the best Super Bowls of all time. My goal is to call top games. I’ve been very adamant about that over the last couple years. My goal is still to get back there. I don’t know what that looks like. I don’t know where that takes place.

‘But I’m continuing to work towards that goal and hopefully have the opportunity get back to calling these marquee games at some point.’

Brady has taken significant criticism in his first year alongside Burkhardt in the Fox booth. Most recently he was roasted for a mistake he made during the NFC Wild Card game between the Eagles and the Green Bay Packers.

With time winding down in the first half, and the Eagles up 10-0, Brady decided to praise a play call from Philadelphia. Unfortunately for him, he had a bit of a slip of the tongue and said the name of the baseball team from the City of Brotherly Love, rather than the football team.

‘[You have] three timeouts, so you’d have a couple plays. But I like this call by the Phillies… excuse me, by Philly,’ Brady said on the air.

Brady also mixed up the name of Packers running back Josh Jacobs – calling him Brandon Jacobs instead.

Brandon Jacobs is a retired NFL halfback, who was best known for winning two Super Bowls with the New York Giants – beating Brady both times.

Fans on social media eviscerated Brady, saying that he and Burkhardt should be replaced by the ‘No. 2’ Fox broadcast team of Joe Davis and Olsen.

The ‘No. 2’ team of Davis/Olsen was voted the Best NFL Broadcast Team of 2024 in a poll of over 2,400 fans conducted by sports media site Awful Announcing . Burkhardt/Brady came 14th out of 25 broadcast teams.

‘Maybe Brady’s not cut out for broadcasting,’ wrote one user on X, formerly Twitter.

A few weeks earlier Brady was ripped for referring to Steelers running back Najee Harris as Najeh Davenport. While the latter did play the position for Pittsburgh, he had not done so since 2008.

‘Brady regressed this week,’ The Athletic’s sports media columnist Andrew Marchand wrote on X. ‘No extra insight all day. He said ”chunks” a thousand times.’

Marchand was not alone in his assessment.

‘Tom Brady replacing Greg Olsen in the booth is like Mac Jones replacing Brady in New England,’ said USA Today’s Safid Deen, referring to Brady’s doomed replacement with the Patriots.

‘Having to listen to Tom Brady makes this even more difficult,’ said Jeff Hartman, a podcast host on the Steel Curtain Network.

‘If FOX does not discharge Brady after this season, some respect will be lost,’ former MLB writer Jed Weisberger wrote. ‘He is absolutely horrendous as an analyst and has no ability to do this job. Makes me wish I was still writing national media. Worst ever.’

However, Marchand struck a different tone during Sunday’s NFC Championship: ‘Brady is having his best game.’

As for Brady’s future in the booth, his agent Don Yee denied reports the ex-QB could quit announcing to focus on the Las Vegas Raiders full time after being approved as a minority owner of the team last year.

‘Tom has had a tremendous amount of fun working with Fox this year, and he’s really excited about the future with Fox and his growth on their team,’ Yee told Sports Business Journal. ‘And this year was the first year of a long relationship.’