Peyton Manning reached out Troy Aikman, among others, before playing in his first Super Bowl to get some advice on how to handle the Big Game.
Aikman, who won three тιтles with the Cowboys in the 1990s, relayed that Manning should try to keep the week as normal as possible, despite all the madness.
Tom Brady is now on the reverse side of that spectrum, having played in 10 Super Bowls but preparing for his first as a Fox analyst.
Aikman, who previously made the transition from quarterback to analyst, believes that same outlook applies from a first-time broadcaster.
“For anyone who’s played in a Super Bowl, to say, ‘Well, yeah, it’s like any other game,’ they’ve not played in it because it’s not. As soon as you win the championship game, you know that Super Bowl is unlike any other game you will play in and the same is true as a broadcaster, just the entire day is different,” Aikman said earlier this week on the “SI Media wWith Jimmy Traina” podcast.
“When you first do your hit on the pregame, or even right before you go on air, the timing is very different, the halftime is very different, everything is. But eventually, like it does as a player, things settle in. So you’re ramped up to begin, there’s a lot of adrenaline, a lot of emotion and you just try to let the game unfold and ease into it. With that is preparation and I think that was always the key for me as a player, it’s the key for me as a broadcaster. The more prepared I am, the better I feel about knowing both teams, the storylines, each player, who might emerge as a dark horse who’s all of a sudden the talk of the game. Do you know about that player? There’s a lot to it and just be mindful of that.”
Aikman called six Super Bowls for Fox before leaving for ESPN with Brady ultimately taking his spot this season as the network’s top analyst.
Brady will bring a unique perspective to the Super Bowl considering he made what felt like yearly appearances in the league’s тιтle game, winning six with the Patriots and one with the Buccaneers.
There perhaps is no one better suited to understand what each quarterback will be going through on each drive or to explain to listeners how each signal-caller should attack each play.
And if the game somehow gets to a 28-3 score, Brady will be in his sweet spot.
“I always said as a player that — as you know, I played in three, I don’t think you can ever play in enough Super Bowls to where all of a sudden it just becomes another game, where you’re like, ‘Oh, yeah, just back in another Super Bowl, I’ve been there, done that,’” said Aikman, who now works for ESPN/ABC. “Tom Brady might be that one guy, who might be the one guy who can say that.
“There’s always this idea, hey impart upon the audience what this quarterback is feeling or what it’s like and I always like watching the Super Bowl, especially early, because the quarterbacks, the people who possess the ball, I know the nerves that are running through your veins when a game starts and how players kind of manage that feeling. When I have called Super Bowls, I’ve tried to kind of give the audience a peek behind the curtain in that sense.”
Aikman said part of the difficulty of calling the Super Bowl is finding the right balance between telling stories from the broadcaster’s career versus focusing on the players in that year’s game.
Sure, fans would love to hear Brady tell stories from his 10 appearances, but that can detract from what is happening on the field.
Aikman noted that the beginning of the game can be the hardest part before an announcer — much like a quarterback — finds his groove.
“In broadcasting, you’re like, ‘Just get through this on camera without just stepping in it, saying something dumb, your tongue gets heavy and you can’t talk,” Aikman said. “Then you kind of settle in, like everything else. The nerves are comparable.”
He added: “It tests you in a lot of ways, for sure.”
