Sunday’s NFC Championship broadcast on FOX could very likely be the last one Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen work on as a team, but neither person is particularly concerned about whether or not that’s the case.
Legendary quarterback Tom Brady is believed to be making his start in broadcasting next season as FOX’s number one analyst, bumping Olsen to the network’s B-team.
Burkhardt and Olsen were guests on the SI Media Podcast with Jimmy Traina, and Kevin said he hasn’t given much thought to the possibility of Sunday being the last game he and Olsen call together.
“We’ve been asked this question every single day since the beginning of last year,” Burkhardt said. “I’ll speak for me. If I thought like that, like oh my gosh, I would have been in a f–king nuthouse by now. I think we are gonna do what we have always done and go out and enjoy the heck out of it and have a great time and let the cards fall where they may.”
Greg Olsen said the thought of being replaced is not uncharted territory.
“This is nothing new in this career path, and it was nothing new when I was a player,” he said. “I had been tried to be replaced, and been replaced, traded, cut and all in between. It’s the life we all sign up for. We’re all big boys, we all understand that all aspects related to the NFL is a very competitive environment that a lot of people want to get involved in.”
Traina asked both about the differences between calling a regular season game and a playoff game and if they changed their preparation or approach to the broadcast given the significance of the game. But Olsen echoed Burkhardt in that it doesn’t make sense at this point to change up what you’ve been doing all year.
“We just keep calling our game. We just keep doing the game the way we see it, the way we talk about it, and the way that we find maybe is a little bit different, new,” Olsen said. “We point out things that maybe not everyone’s pointing out. We dive into subjects of the game that are kind of a little more new age and a little more analytics.”
“We think now after doing it for two years with this team we feel like a lot of people find it interesting,” he continued. “We feel like a lot of other people are starting to talk about those things when maybe they hadn’t always.”
As for Brady waiting in the wings to take the top seat, Greg Olsen said he’ll just continue to work hard and be as entertaining as possible.
“We’re gonna keep doing us, whatever team I’m on next year, whatever my future holds, wherever I am, so be it,” he said. “Obviously I’m on the record about how much I respect Tom. I understand the situation. He’s the greatest football player of all time, I get it. I understand what we all sign up for, but it is not gonna alter one thing we do, and it does not take away one thing from what we’ve done. All we’ve done is continue to deliver, and the ratings and all metrics show it.”
