Why Erin Andrews felt out of shape at the start of the first week

Erin Andrews spoke candidly on Monday about how she felt ahead of the first week of the NFL season.

As she recaps her experience in Cleveland – where she covered the Browns’ opening game against the Cowboys on Sunday with her Fox team of Kevin Burkhardt and newcomer Tom Brady – the popular 46-year-old sideline reporter spoke with friend and fellow sports reporter Charissa Thompson on her podcast “Calm Down” about the struggles she’s been dealing with behind the scenes and feeling like she’s not quite “getting into the swing of things.”

“It was a lot because it’s Week 1 and for some reason – I talked to my dad, I talked to you, you picked me up off the floor – there’s just a lot going on, a lot going on for me. For some reason, I didn’t feel like Stella was in her groove. I’m telling you, I was really struggling as far as the confidence of the show,” Andrews told Thompson, 42.

The designer of WEAR by Erin Andrews later said that she “couldn’t sleep for about two days before,” explaining that it wasn’t because of the show, but because of matters on the home front.

“I’m just dealing with a lot of stuff having to do with the baby (son Mack, whom she has with husband Jarret Stoll) and our house. Our air conditioning broke the night before the game. It’s 80 degrees in our house and I have a baby and a dog, it was just too much,” she said.

Andrews said she talked to her father about what it was like to deal with other serious cases and venture into the spotlight, quoting lyrics from Taylor Swift’s song “I Can Do It With a Broken Heart.”

“But then when we walked around before the game, it was like I was back, I’m back,” she said.

Andrews, who has been with Fox Sports since 2012, subsequently reported a small fumble during a practice as the team prepared for Brady’s highly anticipated television debut.

“We did a quick rehearsal with Tom because we had never done this before, where they blame me for it. People don’t understand, they have stick mics and then they have to wear headphones, and then they have to get up and move and all that, I completely messed up my show,” she said. “…And I say, look, Tom Brady, you’re not the only one who has problems sometimes. Not that he had problems, but I tried to cheer him up.”

Brady, who joined Fox in May 2022 on a massive 10-year, $375 million contract, also brought a unique perspective.

“I’ve known him for a while and spent a lot of time with him off the field, which was cool. But what I enjoyed most about hanging out with him was his stories and the things he tells us, his insight into what it’s like behind the scenes and also his opinion on things,” Andrews said.

“…But when he analyzed the game at our meeting, he said that the first week of the season, there are a lot of unknowns, but there’s also a lot of fear. He said this is the time of year when guys are the most fearful because they’re just thinking, I don’t know what’s going to happen, I don’t know what we’re going to look like. We hope we look some way, but we don’t know what the whole thing is going to look like.”

The Cowboys, who signed veteran quarterback Dak Prescott to a historic $240 million contract on Sunday morning, crushed the Browns 33-17.

Andrews and his team will travel to Arlington next week to attend the Cowboys’ first home game against the Saints, who dismantled the helpless Panthers 47-10 in their opener.