Erin Andrews spoke candidly Monday about how she was feeling in the lead-up to Week 1 of the NFL season.
When recapping her experience in Cleveland — where she covered Sunday’s Browns-Cowboys opener with her Fox team of Kevin Burkhardt and new addition Tom Brady — the beloved sideline reporter, 46, spoke to pal and fellow sportscaster Charissa Thompson on their “Calm Down” podcast about what she had been dealing with behind the scenes, feeling like she didn’t quite have “her groove.”
“It was a lot because it’s Week 1 and for some reason — I was talking to my dad, I was talking to you, you were picking me up off the floor — just have a lot going on, I have a lot going on. For some reason, I didn’t feel like Stella had her groove. I will tell you this, I was really struggling in the confidence area of the show,” Andrews told Thompson, 42.
The WEAR by Erin Andrews designer then shared she “couldn’t sleep for like two days leading up to it,” explaining it wasn’t because of the broadcast but matters on the home front.
“Just dealing with a lot of stuff going on with the baby [son Mack, whom she shares with husband Jarret Stoll], our house, our air conditioner crapped the bed the night before the game. [It’s] 80 degrees inside our house and I’ve got a baby and a dog, it was just a lot,” she expressed.
Andrews said she conversed with her dad about grappling with other serious instances and braving the spotlight, citing lyrics to Taylor Swift’s song, “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”
“But then, once we started walking around for pregame, it was like, I’m back, I’m back,” she said.
Andrews, who has been part of Fox Sports since 2012, then detailed a minor fumble in rehearsal as the team readied for Brady’s highly anticipated broadcast debut.
“We were doing a quick rehearsal with Tom because we hadn’t done it before where they throw it down to me. People don’t understand, they’re on stick mics then they have to go to headset and it’s a whole thing when they have to get up and move and all that, I completely butchered the s–t out of my open,” she said. “… And I go, see Tom Brady, you’re not the only one that struggles sometimes, not that he was struggling, but was trying to make him feel better.”
Brady, who joined Fox in May 2022 on a massive 10-year, $375 million contract, also brought a unique perspective to the table.
“There’s a lot of times that, I’ve known him for a while, I’ve gotten to hang out with him a lot off the field, which has been cool, but always my favorite thing about hanging out with him is his stories and the stuff he tells us, his insight, what it looks like behind the scenes, also his opinion on stuff,” Andrews said.
“… But him breaking down the game in our meeting, he was saying there’s a lot of unknowns in the very first week of the season but there’s also a lot of anxiety, he was saying this is the time of year where guys have the most anxiety because they’re just like, I don’t know what’s going to happen, I don’t know how we’re going to look, we hope we look someway but we don’t know how it’s going to all look.”
The Cowboys, fresh off securing veteran quarterback Dak Prescott on a historic $240 million contract Sunday morning, demolished the Browns, 33-17.
Andrews and company will travel to Arlington next week for the Cowboys’ home opener against the Saints, who dismantled the hapless Panthers, 47-10, in their opener.