Behind the Scenes with FOX’s NFL team: How Tom Brady, the team tells stories through pictures

by Richie Zyontz
FOX NFL Lead Producer

Editor’s Note: Richie Zyontz has been an NFL producer for FOX since 1994 and is in his 23rd season as executive producer. He has more than 40 years of league coverage experience and has produced seven Super Bowls. Throughout the 2024 NFL season, he offers an inside look as FOX’s new No. 1 team. Read behind-the-scenes stories from Richie Zyontz here.

My first manager in sports television once described football broadcasting as combining three main elements.

He mentioned the publishers’ comments as the first stage – painting a picture with words. Then came live broadcasts and replays — picture by picture.

It was the third part that surprised me – drawing a picture and telling a story with words and numbers pasted on the screen.

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It was the world of photography, and for more than 40 years, it was the starting point for many successful producers, directors and managers.

Once upon a time, the graphics in a football game contained very little. On the ground and in the yard, the names of the players are attached to the odd numbers, and the score only if you go to commercial. By today’s standards, it was almost criminally ignorant.

So, when CBS Sports started a program in 1981 to improve the pictures at all of their events, I was lucky enough to be among the first group hired.

Although I’m not sure why. Love and deep knowledge of sports, maybe. But being a security guard at the CBS headquarters known as Blackrock didn’t qualify me for this new show.

The first photo truck I worked on had four people. There was a broadcast partner (me) in charge of editing, a videographer, a statistician, and a person who uses earphones to score other games. A cozy little crew crammed into a rented trailer with three or four monitors to work with. And maybe a donut or two.

Now the graphics unit counts twelve people, multiple monitors, and takes up an entire truck.

Needless to say, that key third segment of sports broadcasting I described back in 1981 grew by leaps and bounds, changing forever when FOX entered the network picture in 1994.

FOX wanted its graphics to be an industry leader, with an emphasis on making a distinct visual difference to what we put on the screen. The most enduring and important of those innovations has been the Fox Box, which keeps the score constant and from which many other statistics appear. Ridiculed at the time by other networks, it has now been copied by everyone, 30 years later.

FOX LEADS THE WAY WITH A GRAPHIC, AND TOM BRADY IS HERE

The explosion of images on your screen is accompanied by the increase in information now available to us. At one point, the study included a review of the group’s news release. That’s not the case anymore.

We have half a dozen sources of information at our fingertips each week. Tom Brady jumps into weekly calls with NFL Next Gen Stats and Pro Football Focus, two prominent sources of complex data.

In our first meeting of the season with Brady, he didn’t seem interested in making math a big part of his broadcast collection. That has changed now. He is clearly excited about the knowledge available to him and enthusiastically discusses and dissects this analytical data every week.

Now, some statistics have not been kind to our employees. In the games we have covered, the visitors won 7 out of 8, outscoring the home team by 251-154 points. Through 8 weeks of the NFL season, 67 games have been decided by 7 points or less. Our group has only seen two.

But there is a silver lining, especially for a new broadcaster learning the ropes.

BRADY KEPT HIGH STRENGTH, WHILE HAWKS STRUGGLE

Power saving is important for anyone wearing a headset. That’s easier said than done when the game seems less competitive. There are Hall of Fame broadcasters who sound bored when they call bad games. As a viewer, that’s poison.

Looking at how our first eight games have played out, my money is on Brady to avoid such bad habits.

On a typical rainy day in Seattle this past Sunday, we were treated to another one-sided game, as the Buffalo Bills and their electric quarterback Josh Allen dismantled the Seahawks, 31-10. Rain and wind were a big part of the story, and it plays into Tom’s experience playing in bad weather.

As the game got out of hand, Kevin Burkhardt and Tom had opportunities for great anecdotal conversations.

For example, Brady took time to praise the Bills Mafia while telling a story about how that fan base would hang an effigy of him when he was with the Patriots. It was an exciting story that may not have been told during such a close, exciting contest.

It didn’t take long for someone’s strength to falter. Not in our booth and not in the field, where our submerged camera people get the best pictures.

They captured their Seattle teammates fighting on the field and on the bench from multiple angles.

There was also a strong under protection image, which has long been a signature of our group of good cameras.

As the rain continued, those pictures were even more amazing.

My favorite photo, courtesy of our ground zone photographer Andy Mitchell, was an extreme close-up of the football just before the snap, wet in one half, dry in the other. Good!

GO TO LAMBEAU, THE FINE DINING PLACE FOR AN NFL GAME

So now we move on to Green Bay for the NFC battle between the Packers and Detroit Lions. Lambeau Field is the best game day venue in the NFL.

As always, our photo team will upload interesting numbers. Hopefully, we’ll be able to close out a close game, but if not, there’s always a silver lining.

Richie Zyontz has been an NFL producer for FOX since 1994 and is in his 23rd season as lead producer. He has more than 40 years of experience covering the NFL.

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