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With just under six minutes remaining in the third quarter of the Thanksgiving day matchup between the Green Bay Packers and Detroit Lions on Thursday afternoon, Jordan Love found Dontayvion Wicks for a 30-yard gain to set Green Bay up at Detroit’s 25-yard line. As his job now requires him to do, Tom Brady analyzed the big gain on Fox’s broadcast. “There he is. Wicks just sliding through the line of scrimmage, straight up the seam,” the 7-time Super Bowl-winning quarterback said as a replay aired. “Again, when I told you earlier in the game, when there’s a safety in the middle of the field, you want to attack the seams. It’s not that hard. Look off the safety and throw the seam.” Tom Brady: “When there’s a safety in the middle of the field, you want to attack the seams. It’s not that hard. Look off the safety and throw the seam.” pic.twitter.com/SXjC0XHxQ1 — The Comeback NFL (@TheComebackNFL) November 28, 2025 In and of itself, Brady’s analysis was fairly unremarkable; all he was doing was narrating a replay and providing his perspective as a former quarterback. But in the larger context of his two-year career as a broadcaster, it was one of the best pieces of evidence you could find to pinpoint the impressive year-over-year improvement he’s made. Brady was insightful, but concise, hammering home his point in a 15-second window. He also displayed his trademark confidence in a way that was clearly complimentary of Love, while simultaneously providing a dash of humor in the form of a callback to his NFL on Fox commercial from earlier this season. There were other highlights too; just minutes earlier, he joked that Micah Parsons should stop complaining to the refs because he should know by now that he’s going to get held of on every play. Throughout Thursday’s broadcast, Brady appeared more comfortable and mechanically improved as an analyst — especially compared to this time a year ago, when his Thanksgiving debut as a broadcaster was universally panned. We’re hardly the only ones who have taken notice. Tom Brady has gotten way better at announcing. Genuinely enjoyable today. He needs to just do the Elizabeth Holmes thing and lower his voice lol — kang (@jaycaspiankang) November 27, 2025 How you feel about broadcasters is always subjective. (Same with pretty much any creative position — and this idiot sports writer). With that said: Tom Brady has really improved as an analyst since last year. So much more comfortable with the mechanics of the job, explaining… — Richard Deitsch (@richarddeitsch) November 27, 2025 Credit where it’s due. Tom Brady has improved by leaps and bounds as a color analyst. He’s already better than Tony Romo. — Brian Drake (@DrakeFantasy) November 27, 2025 I enjoy listening to Tom Brady chat about football with his analysis. When I see someone improve as dramatically as he has, it’s clear he has that desire to be great at everything, which means he is so willing to truly critique himself and be better, which is pretty awesome. — Howard Chen 陈定豪 (@TheHoChen) November 27, 2025 That’s not to say that anybody’s going to accuse Brady of being the modern day John Madden anytime soon, and most would likely still consider him a tier below Fox’s current No. 2 analyst, Greg Olsen, as a pure broadcaster. But if we’re calling balls and strikes, the 48-year-old’s vast improvement is worth calling attention to, especially considering how rare it is to have an ex-athlete of his stature on weekly national broadcasts. It’s also fair to wonder how much better Brady can still get, as he’s only midway through the second season of his 10-year, $375 million deal with Fox. Ultimately, the network knew that it was paying more for his notoriety than it was his broadcasting acumen. But just as he did during his legendary playing career, the 3-time NFL MVP is beginning to develop a reputation for delivering when it matters most. The post Tom Brady has vastly improved as a broadcaster appeared first on Awful Announcing.

The streaming era is a polarizing topic, especially for sports fans. On one hand, fans have access to more content than they could ever possibly consume. On the other, it’s more expensive and more cumbersome than ever to actually follow the sports you want to watch. That’s what makes the Amazon Prime Video Black Friday marathon stand out. You don’t have to switch apps to watch sports all day. It may seem like a silly concept, but it’s something that is very real. In the halcyon days of cable, you could easily switch between games that you wanted to watch. You knew the channel numbers. It was easy. But in 2025, things are vastly different. Is something on linear or is it on streaming? Do I have to open up YouTube TV or the ESPN app? Is it on NBC or Peacock? And will it show up on my home screen or do I have to go searching for it through unlimited archives in an app to find it? Oh, and that’s as long as there isn’t some kind of massive carriage dispute that will black out something that you probably want to watch. That’s why the Amazon Prime Video Black Friday marathon is something that serves as an oasis in the desert for sports fans. You don’t have to go anywhere all day. Black Friday has traditionally been a college football day. But like most other holidays in the fall, the NFL began to claim the day for themselves. When the NFL first put a game on Black Friday in 2023, it was a genius cross-promotion with new streaming partner Amazon on the biggest shopping day of the year. It seems like it’s hard to imagine now, but we were still getting used to some of the biggest properties in sports appearing on streaming platforms. Now it’s become something that’s just a fact of life. But fast forward to 2025 and Amazon is in a very different place as a sports outlet. They have deals with NASCAR, the WNBA, and the NBA to just name a few. And with this year being the first in their new NBA deal, they are wisely using the lead-in opportunity from an NFL game to air an NBA doubleheader with two attractive matchups between the Bucks and Knicks and Mavericks and Lakers. They also extended it to a quadruple-header that starts at 9 a.m. ET in the morning with the resurrection of The Skins Game. It’s the perfect easy watch while you’re putting up Christmas decorations or just trying to recover from eating your own body weight in turkey on Thanksgiving. The power of an NFL lead-in can’t be understated. We’ve seen bull riding and sailing reach multi-million figure audiences just because they are being played on Sunday afternoons after football. The audience that will just naturally stick around on Amazon Prime Video because there is an NFL game can’t be understated. But it’s not just because sports fans are lazy, it’s because they are tired. The effort that fans have to put in to find games and switch between apps can be exhausting and frustrating. Instead of one cable or satellite subscription, fans have to do calculus every day to figure out where something is being televised they want to watch. And then you add on the headache of all the different subscriptions and its no wonder that fans are crying out for things to be simplified. In many ways, it’s one of the reasons why ABC has struck gold with their SEC tripleheader on Saturdays. It’s convenient! You can turn on ABC at noon and know that you’ll have three very solid to great games all day without even having to change the channel. Compare that to the Big Ten who is bouncing around network to network throughout the day with their “NFL model” between Fox, CBS, and NBC. If all those games aired on the same network, ratings would automatically increase. It’s one thing to just stick around and watch Penn State-Iowa if you don’t have to change the channel. It’s another thing if you have to go seek it out. College football is a Black Friday tradition. There will be plenty of games throughout the day with playoff implications on various networks. But Amazon Prime Video might win the day because…

The kids today get to have basketball video games with crisp graphics and realistic gameplay. But for an entire generation of basketball fans, there was nothing like playing two-on-two with larger-than-life NBA players who had larger-than-normal heads. NBA Jam was an institution of the video game console and arcade scene during the 1990s, and it made Tim Kitzrow an icon. More specifically, it made his voice an icon. While few people playing had any idea who he was, his “BOOMSHAKALAKA” dunk call and “HE’S ON FIRE!” three-pointer call were schoolyard memes repeated ad nauseum by 15-year-olds shooting hoops in their backyards. Kitzrow has talked about the process of making NBA Jam and creating the legendary calls before. But he recently spoke with Paul McNally at The Escapist about those early days and how doing voice work for video games wasn’t exactly a lucrative business. “It was $50 an hour,” Kitzrow said. “Same as the pinball. I’d go in, do a couple of sessions – maybe 15 hours total – and that was it. I wasn’t smart enough, savvy enough to know the business, to go, ‘Gee, these games make a lot of money, maybe I should make more than $50 an hour.’ I didn’t have an agent at the time.” It wasn’t until later, when NBA Jam became a phenomenon, that he realized he’d probably left some money on the table. “When the game came out, and I found out it made a billion dollars, that’s when I realised I’d made like 800-and-change, maybe something like that,” he said. “I thought, ‘Well, I’m probably being underpaid. I might want to raise my rate.'” Even then, he received an icy response from many in the industry, who still didn’t see the value of doing voice work for video games. How far we’ve come. Kitzrow seems to be doing just fine these days. He returned for NBA Jam Tournament Edition and eventually became Midway’s go-to for in-game commentary, appearing in NFL Blitz, NBA Showtime, and MLB Slugfest. He most recently provided commentary for Mutant Football League 2, which will be available in early December. The post NBA Jam announcer Tim Kitzrow recalls miniscule payday for iconic calls appeared first on Awful Announcing.

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