Behind the Scenes with FOX’s NFL crew: How Tom Brady, team tell stories with graphics

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 the lead producer. He has more than 40 years of experience covering the league and has produced seven Super Bowls. Throughout the 2024 NFL season, he is providing an inside look as FOX’s new No. 1 NFL team, including NFL legend Tom Brady, makes its journey toward Super Bowl LIX. Read more behind-the-scenes stories from Richie Zyontz here.

My first boss in sports television once described a football broadcast as consisting of three primary elements.

He cited commentary from the announcers as the first category — painting a picture with words. Then came live coverage and replays — painting a picture with pictures.

It was the third component that took me by surprise — painting a picture and telling a story with words and numbers plastered on the screen.

It was the world of graphics, and for more than 40 years, it has been the career starting point for many successful producers, directors and executives.

Once upon a time, graphics in a football game consisted of very little. Down and yardage, player names attached to rudimentary statistics, and the score only when going to commercial. By today’s standards, it was almost criminally uninformative.

So, when CBS Sports began a program in 1981 to upgrade the graphics on all their events, I was fortunate to be among the first group hired.

Although I’m not sure why. A love and pretty deep knowledge of sports, perhaps. But being a security guard in the CBS headquarters known as Blackrock hardly qualified me for this new adventure.

The first graphics truck I worked in consisted of four people. There was the broadcast associate (me) in charge of the editorial, the technician operating the graphics machine, a statistician, and a person on a headset getting scores from other games. A cozy little group huddled in a rental trailer with three or four monitors to work with. And maybe a donut or two.

Now the graphics unit numbers a dozen people, dozens of monitors, and takes up an entire truck.

A broadcast graphics truck is a much busier place these days than it used to be. (Photo courtesy of Richie Zyontz)

Needless to say, that third key component of a sports telecast described to me way back in 1981 has grown by leaps and bounds, changed forever when FOX entered the network picture in 1994.

FOX wanted its graphics to be the industry leader, with an emphasis on making a unique visual difference to what we put on the screen. The most lasting and significant of those innovations was the Fox Box, which keeps the score on constantly and from which many other stats are triggered. Mocked at the time by other networks, it has now been copied by everyone, 30 years later.

FOX LEADS THE WAY IN GRAPHICS, AND TOM BRADY IS ALL IN

The explosion of graphics on your screen coincides with the explosion of information now available to us. Once upon a time, research consisted of poring through team press releases. Not anymore.

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

At our first offseason meeting with Brady, he didn’t seem particularly interested in making statistics a big part of his broadcasting repertoire. That has now changed. He is clearly excited about the information available to him and enthusiastically discusses and dissects this analytic data every week.

Rich Russo directs Bills vs. Seahawks, with Tom Brady on the call: Behind-the-scenes of NFL on FOX

Now, certain stats have not been kind to our crew. Of the games we’ve covered, the visitors have won 7 of 8, outscoring the home team by a cumulative score of 251-154. Through 8 weeks of the NFL season, 67 games have been decided by 7 points or fewer. Our crew has only seen two of them.

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

BRADY KEEPS HIS ENERGY UP IN A BLOWOUT, WHILE SEAHAWKS FIGHT THEMSELVES

Maintaining energy is crucial to anyone wearing a headset. That’s easier said than done when the game proves to be less than competitive. There are Hall of Fame broadcasters who sound bored when calling bad games. As a viewer, that’s poisonous.

Considering how our first eight games have played out, my money is on Brady avoiding 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. The rain and wind were a huge part of the story, and played right into Tom’s wheelhouse of experience playing in bad weather.

Rain and wind (and hair in his eyes) couldn’t slow down Josh Allen against the Seahawks. (Photo by Steph Chambers/Getty Images)

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

For instance, Brady took time to praise the Bills Mafia while telling a story about how that same fan base would hang him in effigy when he was with the Patriots. It was a fun story that might not have been told during a close, exciting contest.

Not for a second did anyone’s energy waver. Not in our booth and not on the field, where our drenched camera people found some incredible shots.

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

Our cameras caught the Seahawks scuffling with each other during the game.

There were also tight under the helmet shots, which have long been the signature of our fabulous camera crew.

With the steady rain falling, those shots were even more dramatic.

My favorite picture, courtesy of our low end zone cameraman Andy Mitchell, was an extreme closeup of a football just before the snap, wet on one half, dry on the other. Beautiful!

ON TO LAMBEAU, THE NFL’S BEST GAME-DAY ENVIRONMENT

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

As usual, our graphics crew will be loaded with interesting numbers. Hopefully, we get to cover 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 boasts more than 40 years of experience covering the NFL.