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There are multiple ways for former players to break into sports broadcasting. One underrated method is to play for a control-freak coach who hates the media.
Take Bill Belichick’s 24-season run with the Patriots that produced six Super Bowl wins and nine appearances. The tight-lipped coach rigidly enforced a strict media strategy that limited press access to his players and coaches. All along, The Hoodie was aided by his shadowy PR “consigliere” and “gatekeeper” Berj Najarian.
That stifling approach worked only as long as players were under Belichick’s thumb. Once they were released from media prison at 1 Patriot Place in Foxborough, Mass., his former players had plenty to say.
Just ask former Pats backup QB Brian Hoyer, who launched a podcast with fellow former Patriot David Andrews, The Quick Snap, and appears on NBC Sports Boston and in Patriots team programming like the series Forged in Foxborough.
“We were basically media trained by Bill for so long. We’ve got a lot pent-up that we want to say—and that we want to share,” Hoyer told Front Office Sports on the latest episode of Portfolio Players.
“Now, when you move on, you understand what it takes to be successful, right? First and foremost, out of all the organizations I was with, it was kind of ingrained in you at a young part of your career: This is what it takes to be successful. And those translate after football. And so you can see the formula, whether it’s the guys in the media or the guys in the business world. Obviously, Tom [Brady] is doing both. Julian [Edelman] does both.”
Hoyer has a point. And the list goes far beyond Brady and Edelman.
Over the last two decades, NFL TV was chock-a-block with ex-Cowboys from Jimmy Johnson’s 1990s dynasty such as Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, Jason Witten, Emmitt Smith, and the old coach himself. Now, you can’t swing a dead cat without hitting a graduate of Belichick’s school of media hard knocks in New England:
- Tom Brady is in his second season as Fox Sports’s No. 1 game analyst. He’s the highest-paid on-air talent in sports thanks to his monster 10-year, $375 million contract with Fox. After a rocky first season on the air, and despite criticism of his conflict of interest as a Raiders part-owner, the seven-time Super Bowl winner is earning better reviews lately from critics and colleagues.
- Randy Moss leads the team of ex-Pats at ESPN. While Moss is a mainstay on Sunday. NFL Countdown, former teammate Tedy Bruschi is a regular studio analyst on NFL Live and Get Up. Ditto for Damien Woody, the former offensive lineman, who frequently appears on Get Up, First Take, and NFL Live.
- Several of Brady’s old battery mates are working Fox studio shows, including Julian Edelman on Fox NFL Kickoff and Rob Gronkowski on Fox NFL Sunday. Edelman was the first guest on Hoyer’s podcast.
- Jason McCourty joined CBS Sports as a game analyst in 2023. His twin brother, Devin McCourty, is a studio analyst for NBC’s Football Night in America. Plus, Rodney Harrison has been an analyst on FNIA since 2009.
- Ex-Pats linebackers Rob Ninkovich and Willie McGinest worked for ESPN and NFL Network, respectively, before being dropped in 2023. Ninkovich has a pod with Dan O’Brien called The Dan and Ninko Show.
- Chris Long won a Super Bowl in his only season in New England. Now the former defensive end hosts the Green Light with Chris Long podcast, which boasts 318,000 subscribers, and is a fixture on Inside the NFL.
- Former Brady backup QB Matt Cassel cohosts the Lots to Say podcast.
Belichick treated his players like drones during his time in New England. He was notorious for accurately predicting the questions reporters would ask them, and ordering players how to respond with risk-free, non-answers. If they slipped up and accidentally said something interesting, Belichick would call them out in team meetings as if they’d fumbled or thrown an interception.
Back in the day, Phil Simms told similar stories about gruff Giants coach Bill Parcells. During their careers, Simms and other Giants felt stifled by the Big Tuna’s top-down approach to media. To add insult to injury, they’d watch in frustration as their coach happily chatted with the ink-stained wretches from the New York Post and Daily News on background.
But Parcells’s top-down approach to media helped Simms become one of the biggest stars in sports media history. When he entered the business with ESPN, NBC, and CBS, the TV suits were used to him being mute in the locker room. Instead, the Super Bowl XXI MVP QB was dying to talk, educate, entertain. When Simms showed off his football acumen, insights, and sense of humor, he was hailed as a breath of fresh air.
Simms zoomed to the top of the profession, eventually calling eight Super Bowls for CBS and NBC. In his current role as podcaster, he’s declared war on football TV-speak clichés such as “running downhill” and getting players “out in space.”
It’s easy to dump on the aloof, 73-year-old Belichick after his disastrous 4–8 season at UNC. But his rigid approach also helped meld players, coaches, and reporters who dealt with him into tempered steel. Mike Vrabel, current coach of the 11–3 Pats, apprenticed under The Hoodie. National NFL insider Ian Rapoport of NFL Network made his journalism bones covering both Belichick and his intimidating spiritual twin Nick Saban at Alabama for local newspapers.
If there’s one insight analysts who played for controlling coaches like Belichick and Parcells should absorb, it’s this: Tell hard truths. Don’t play it safe. Level with your audience about coaching mistakes and ridiculous referee calls. Take the side of viewers, not players. Viewers can smell b.s. a mile away. Which is why plain-spoken analysts like Troy Aikman of ESPN’s Monday Night Football are so popular.
Hoyer is not surprised TV networks want to hire ex-Pats. They know the secret sauce. As Hoyer told FOS, his experience with the Pats gave him a priceless education.
“I have a master’s degree when it comes to football. I didn’t just play for 15 years, I played in one of the greatest organizations that won multiple championships, and played for the greatest coach and played with the greatest player,” he said. “You mention all those other [Patriots] guys. We have stories to share. The thing that I’ve learned specifically from doing my podcast: You can rant. People want to hear those stories. They want to get a peek behind the curtain and know the locker room moments or the meal room moments. It’s been fun to share.”
