When the Baldinger family moved to Long Island from Minnesota in 1975, their oldest boy, 16, was an athletic and outgoing 6-4. He was interested in shooting hoops at the local parks (he was amazed to learn the lights stayed on until 11 at night), excited to land a job as a lifeguard at Tobay Beach and fascinated by a new sport he had never seen or heard of: lacrosse.

Football was barely on his radar. At about 180 pounds, he didn’t seem built for it.

But as a transplanted junior at sports-centric Massapequa High School that fall, and as the son of a former football player and coach at the Naval Academy, he joined the team. He lined up at wide receiver and safety.

“I wasn’t a great player at Massapequa,” Brian Baldinger told Newsday of that experience; his younger brothers were more physically suited to it. "I was really skinny. You look at pictures of me from back then and you are like, ‘There is no way that guy played offensive line in the NFL.’ ”

Yet he did. Undrafted out of Duke, he lasted 12 seasons with the Cowboys, Colts and Eagles. He appeared in 143 regular-season games with 47 starts, including at least one at every position on the offensive line plus another at tight end. Along the way, he and those younger brothers, Rich and Gary, became the first set of three siblings to be on active rosters in the NFL at the same time.

Perhaps even more remarkable and unpredictable than where he went then, though, is where he is now.

Baldinger, 67, is an analyst for NFL Network and ESPN who has carved out a niche for himself on social media as the go-to guru for film study on offensive and defensive linemen. The short one-take film clips that he posts from his phone and dubs “Baldy’s Breakdowns” are some of the most highly regarded football dissections around. They are appreciated not just by fans but by the players who are highlighted and sometimes skewered in them, coaches and executives around the league, and even NFL owners.

“He is Madden-esque,” Giants radio voice Bob Papa said of Baldinger, with whom he covered NFL Europe games in the early 2000s. “The first time I saw one of his breakdowns, I felt like I was a kid watching John Madden explain football. Baldy had that same enthusiasm. He’s the best. He’s truly a free spirit.”

Baldinger also sprinkles in occasional lifestyle vignettes that show him doing everything from growing vegetables in his gardens to snorkeling in the waters near his home in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, to traveling throughout Europe and Asia.

“I enjoy doing the social media stuff,” Baldinger said by phone last week. “You turn on TikTok or Instagram and there are all these bad vibes out there, and I think we’re all kind of tired of it. So I was like, ‘Let’s just keep it light and fun. Let’s allow the fans to enjoy it and take their minds off a lot of the other stuff.’ ”

Becoming an NFL player certainly was an accomplishment that required hard work and dedication, but becoming The Most Interesting Football Analyst in the World in his late 50s and 60s? No one would have pegged him for that job when he first moved into that house on Abbey Street in Massapequa Park.

Brian Baldinger reporting for NFL Network at Jets training camp on Aug 6.

A respected voice

Baldinger’s second career began while his first one still was technically going on. In the spring of 1994, just before he was released by Philadelphia, he attended a weeklong broadcasting boot camp run by ESPN’s Craig James in Dallas that included other players with the similar itch to be on TV such as Merril Hoge and Mike Golic.

“When I finished that week, I knew what I wanted to do,” Baldinger said. “I didn’t know how exactly to do it, but I knew I needed to get started.”

Once his playing days ended — he wanted to play a 13th season, he said, but his body was too broken down for him to pass a physical given by any team that was interested in signing him — he began doing pre- and postgame shows on the radio for the Eagles, called Bucknell University games every Saturday and even dabbled in his own radio programs.

That all led to a gig calling games for the World League of American Football (which soon became NFL Europe) on radio and then television, where he was paired with a young Curt Menefee.

Papa and Baldinger called the last-ever World Bowl in Frankfurt in 2007; Papa said he was stunned that Baldinger knew where to find the best Italian restaurant in Germany during that week. Baldinger came back to the States and continued covering the sport. He worked for Fox as a color analyst on NFL Sunday games and landed a job at NFL Network on a Monday morning show called “The Aftermath.”

That required him to fly to Los Angeles each Sunday night and be in the film room on very little sleep at about 4:30 a.m. each Monday to watch the previous day’s action. It’s where he would meet Daniel Jeremiah, who also was on the program and also there ridiculously early. In a dark room, the two would talk about what they saw and bounce thoughts off each other.

There were points Baldinger wanted to make, especially on the line play, that didn’t make it on the air, so he began posting them online when he could. That was around 2013.

The Baldy Breakdown was born.

“It caught fire right away,” Baldinger said. “The players, the active players, they would comment on it and they loved it. I knew the fans would like it, but the players, that was something else. I knew I had something, I just didn’t know how big it would get.”

Soon coaches and owners were pulling him aside at the games he covered to talk about his postings. His analyses quickly became trusted takes appreciated by the entire league.

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“He sees the game though a really cool lens, a respected lens,” Giants assistant general manager Brandon Brown said. “The insight he has, it’s not just hot takes. There are tangible examples he shows to go with his opinions. He is one of those guys who is not just sampling from what he is hearing. It’s very much what he sees at practice and what he sees on film, and the math adds up.”

Brown said he likes something else about Baldinger. The two of them are Long Islanders.

“There are not too many of us,” said Brown, who grew up in Glen Cove and attended St. Anthony’s, “so I always root for the ones who are around ball.”

Finding a great brand

So what makes a good Breakdown?

“I think it’s the energy, the humor that I throw in there,” Baldinger said. “I’ve given some guys nicknames. They like that. But it could also be some fan jumping out of the stands for a football. It could be some cheerleader who is getting really good vertical lift with a pompom celebrating a touchdown. I don’t know what is going to connect.”

He said one of his favorite clips was from the 2019 Eagles-Bears playoff game in which Cody Parkey attempted a 43-yard field goal that hit the upright and the crossbar but never made it through — the infamous “double doink.” But it wasn’t the kick that Baldinger focused on in his breakdown. It was the mascot who was standing under that goalpost.

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“The bear just collapsed like he had died,” Baldinger recalled with a booming chuckle. “More than the double doink, I did the bear collapsing. That was the story to me.”

He also likes showcasing young players who don’t get much exposure and the often ignored linemen of the league.

“It’s cool to have someone highlight good play like he does instead of chasing a certain player or name,” Jets defensive tackle Harrison Phillips told Newsday. “The trenches are overlooked for sure. Any time someone raises awareness to our guys fighting the good fights, I appreciate that.”

Brian Baldinger reporting for NFL Network at Jets training camp on Aug. 6.

But the real key, it turns out, is the complete lack of production value. At a Jets training camp practice in early August, Baldinger was on the sideline, saw David Bailey and Will McDonald IV stretching next to each other, pulled his phone from his khakis, hit record and just started riffing about their importance to the defense. He hit send a little later, posting the video as-is.

It was Papa, his old broadcasting partner from Europe, who pulled him aside at a holiday party in New York about a decade ago and advised him to keep doing them that way: Gritty and unrefined. Like early Martin Scorsese meets Steve Sabol.

“I know how TV likes to always polish things and make it sizzle and make it look so clean and pure,” Papa said. “So I was like, ‘No, Baldy, don’t do that. There are a million other people doing that.’ He is naturally and ridiculously passionate about X's-and-O's, and he would lose his passion if he was scripted. I told him, ‘Just keep it like that.’ I think it’s become a great brand.”

Baldinger said he is very grateful for Papa’s direction.

“I have some software that I could put the spot shadows and arrows in and add music,” Baldinger said. “But Bob said: ‘Keep doing it on your phone.’ Once Bob said that to me, it made sense. I wanted it to be raw and natural, like we are just sitting there together watching a game. The good, the bad and the ugly of it.”

Proud Massapequan

Baldinger grew up moving around the country while his father, James, a Naval Academy graduate and Marine, was on active duty. He spent time in Quantico and Camp Lejeune and the Philadelphia Naval Base but never stayed very long in any one place. Once James retired from the military, the family moved to Minnesota for about five years. Then James got a job with the Federal Aviation Administration at Kennedy Airport and the crew of eight moved to Long Island.

Despite living here for only six years, long enough to attend two years of high school and then Nassau Community College (where he was a starting tight end and is in the school’s Athletic Hall of Fame) before heading to Duke and the NFL, it was a formative experience. Baldinger considers it home.

“It’s one of the great communities in America,” he said. “I’m really proud to say I am from Massapequa.”

He comes back as often as he can, too. His brother Gary still lives in Massapequa, as do many of the people Brian considers his closest friends.

His parents moved away years ago. His father has since died and his mother, Dolores, whom everyone calls Dolly, lives with her daughter in California.

“She was the champion mom, a Super Mom,” Baldinger said of her attending every game or meet that her six athletic kids participated in. “She was great. And she still pays attention to what’s going on.”

Just this summer Baldinger was here for a bit and did the hometown tour, which included a drive past the old house just off Park Boulevard between Merrick Road and Sunrise Highway, a swim at Tobay and, of course, a burger at All American Hamburger Drive In.

“The line was long, but you have to make the stop,” he said. “It’s a ritual.”

Then it was back to work, hitting the road, grinding away on film and getting ready for the upcoming NFL season. There also was some diving to do and tomatoes to pick, all of which he continues to share with us. The Most Interesting Football Analyst in the World keeps doing what he seemingly was born to do even if, just like his Long Island hometown, he found it by accident and later than most.

Baldinger signed a two-year contract in June with ESPN, which now owns NFL Network. That will keep him working until 2028. He said he wouldn’t mind going beyond that and into his 70s, too, if the network — or anyone else — will have him.

“I have as much energy now as I ever had,” he said. “I can still spend 15 hours on a Monday in a film room and be as happy as can be. I just did 13 training camps in 15 days. I feel like I have all the energy in the world and I love it.”

So does his wide, appreciative audience.

After all these years, neither Baldy nor his Breakdowns are showing any signs of breaking down.

Long Island's Own

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