RandBall: During Vikings broadcast Sunday, Tom Brady was a game manager

Tom Brady made a couple of odd mistakes as the Fox analyst during Sunday’s Vikings’ win over the Packers, including forgetting that the Vikings had already defeated Green Bay once this season.

Any mistakes Brady has made this season, his first in the booth after signing a 10-year, $375 million deal with Fox, have been immediate fodder for aggregators using his name as currency for cheap clicks.

Having not paid much attention to the substance of Brady’s work up until Sunday, I will admit to listening extra closely for signs that Brady is unfit for the job, let alone the salary he is commanding.

I was amused when he declared that the Packers were doing a good job limiting the Vikings’ big plays, right before Fox flashed a graphic showing Minnesota (to that point) had 10 plays of more than 10 yards while Green Bay had just two. Both he and play-by-play partner Kevin Burkhardt had a strange habit of portraying Sunday’s game as more balanced than it really was.

But the biggest takeaway after Sunday’s game — a contest Patrick Reusse and I dissected at length on Monday’s Daily Delivery podcast — wasn’t some sort of hot take about Brady messing up.

It’s that as an analyst at this point in a young career, he’s pretty boring. Brady has started his career in the booth much like he started his career in the NFL: As a game manager.

In emerging as an unlikely hero for the 2001 Patriots during his second season, Brady threw 18 TD passes to 12 interceptions and was tasked mostly with not messing up for a team that tended to win with a dominant defense. He never posted a passer rating above 93 in his first six seasons in the NFL. It wasn’t until the arrival of Randy Moss in 2007 that Brady reinvented himself as more than just composed and clutch.

As an analyst, Brady’s play-it-safe tendencies have returned. There was little in the way of meaningful insight or banter during Sunday’s telecast, and plenty of well-covered topics or cliches.

His postgame interview with Vikings quarterback Sam Darnold was a little better, particularly as Darnold playfully asked Brady to define what “LFG” stands for. But mostly it was Brady asking softball questions and looking uncomfortable doing so — trying to play a part instead of just being himself.

Off-script, in an environment like a podcast, Brady has shown himself to be much more candid and less rigid. He knows as much about playing quarterback as anyone, and when he expresses himself without trying to sound too polished it can be great.

Fox had better hope more of that side of Brady comes out in Year 2 and beyond. He needs to evolve from a game manager into more of a gunslinger, just as he did as a quarterback.