This was some inspiring stuff from the former star tight end turned star broadcaster.
Greg Olsen is in a very awkward position. This Sunday he’ll be in the Fox booth to call the biggest game of his broadcasting career while also knowing that his job will be given away to another former NFL player—Tom Brady.
So while the former tight end gets prepared for Super Bowl LVII, he has to take questions about Brady, who said this week that he won’t jump into the Fox booth until the start of the 2024 NFL season.
Olsen has been so good in his role as the No. 1 analyst at Fox and has quickly become one of the best analysts in all of football. On Tuesday in Arizona he spoke about his situation and did so with such class.
“I knew what I had signed up for. I knew when I sat in the seat that that shadow was always going to kind of be there,” Olsen said, via ProFootballTalk. “My approach this year was very similar to my approach as a player. You can’t control that. You can’t control the next draft pick they bring in to take your spot. You can’t control the next rookie or in this case the greatest football player of all time. My hope was to just go out there and show that I belong and show that I might not have some of the resume, playing quarterback in a big market, but as far as doing this job, that I belong. That’s been my mission. That’s been my objective the whole year. It could last one year, two years, 10 years.
“I don’t know what the future, but to know that I’ll at least have a chance to get this again next year and be back with Kevin and Erin [Andrews] and Tom [Rinaldi] and our producers that we’ve formed a really strong relationship with this year. It’s nice knowing that next Sunday won’t be my last time with this crew. How many more years, we don’t know yet. But at least Sunday won’t be the last one. That’s nice.”
Here’s a video of Olsen talking about the situation:
We can all learn something from Olsen and how he’s handling this, which can’t be very easy.
