Tom Brady still has the receipts. His football archive includes the binders he kept through 23 seasons, filled with call sheets, scouting reports, and notes from games that happened years ago. Before taking over FOX’s top NFL booth, Brady pulled some of them out to show how he had studied the game as a quarterback, and how much of that preparation he planned to carry with him into broadcasting. 

But Brady later admitted that broadcasting came with its own learning curve: as a quarterback, he could see things instinctively; now he had to turn those instincts into words, live, with no chance to take them back. That filter slipped twice during FOX’s Week 2 broadcast of the Cowboys-Commanders game. Brady’s comments naturally went viral, prompting him to issue a public apology on his Ask Tom show for NFL on FOX.

“I’m actually kind of embarrassed. There’s a lot of grandmas at home that probably aren’t very happy with my mouth on Fox. I’m going to fix that. Sorry. I apologize.” But, the throw that earned Brady’s colorful description was hardly an ordinary completion.

Prescott dropped a 35-yard pass into a tight window for Lamb along the sideline, helping Dallas extend its lead to three scores. He finished the afternoon 26-of-31 for 279 yards and four touchdowns without an interception as the Cowboys rolled to a 37-20 win.

And Brady’s praise came on a day when Prescott had already given Cowboys fans another reason to remember his name. Earlier in the game, he tied Tony Romo’s franchise record for touchdown passes before breaking it with a 24-yard touchdown to Lamb. The score gave Prescott 249 touchdown passes as a Cowboy, moving him past Romo’s 248.

Prescott later spoke about the moment with Brady, placing the record in the context of the quarterbacks he grew up watching. “Growing up, being a Cowboys fan and watching Tony [Romo] set the bar — and like you said, Troy [Aikman], Roger [Staubach] and some of the greats that have come before me — I’m honored,” Prescott said. “I’m just getting started.”

That made Brady’s description of Prescott’s throw more fitting than it first sounded. He wasn’t simply reaching for a colorful phrase after seeing Lamb make a big play. He was reacting as a former quarterback to a throw that demanded the same things he spent his own career chasing: velocity, timing and enough control to fit the ball into a window that was barely there.

Brady later broke down exactly what he meant by a “p*ss missile” on #AskTom. His recipe started with force from the ground, moved through the lower half and hips, then finished with shoulder rotation and a relaxed arm that could whip through the ball. In other words, the phrase may have been crude, but the explanation behind it was pure quarterback mechanics.

The Daniels moment was different. With one second left in the first half, the Commanders quarterback stumbled after taking the snap. Washington left guard Nick Allegretti’s foot clipped him, and Daniels tried to brace his fall with his left arm. The resulting elbow injury was serious enough that he was ruled out at halftime and later diagnosed with a dislocated left elbow.

FOX showed the replay, and Brady reacted before he had time to filter it for television. “Was that a center? Nick Allegretti — oh, s*it,” he said before immediately catching himself. “Excuse me. I was not expecting to see that.” Daniels was unable to finish the half and was replaced by Marcus Mariota.

That first slip also helps explain why Brady’s second one landed differently. The Daniels reaction came while watching a painful injury replay. The Prescott remark came from pure excitement over a throw. Two very different moments, but both exposed the same thing about Brady’s new job: the instincts that made him an elite quarterback do not always arrive in broadcast-friendly language.

There was no formal punishment announced by FOX or the NFL. Instead, Brady addressed the viral “p*ss missile” moment himself days later, joking about the swear jar at home before admitting he was embarrassed by how often it had been getting filled. “There’s a lot of grandmas at home that probably aren’t very happy with my mouth on FOX,” he said. “I’m going to fix that.”

The joke works because Brady has spent the better part of two seasons learning a very different kind of discipline. As a quarterback, he could spend a career preparing for the next snap. As a broadcaster, he has to prepare his words just as quickly. Once they reach the microphone, there is no play clock resetting the moment.

That lesson will follow him into Week 3, when Brady returns to the FOX booth for the Buffalo Bills’ meeting with the Los Angeles Chargers at Highmark Stadium on Sunday. Kevin Burkhardt will handle play-by-play, with Brady on color and Erin Andrews and Tom Rinaldi reporting from the sideline. After two very different slips in Dallas, Brady will have another afternoon to prove whether the swear jar can finally stay closed.