Chip Shots: NFL Viewing Thoughts
December 31, 2022 at 12:48 a.m.
Chip Shots: NFL Viewing Thoughts
By Chip Davenport-
The NFL and its varied networks and streaming services shook up 2022 locking into big multi-year deals with the NFL, and there were some shake-ups among the top-billed duos in the announcers’ booths this season.
Some familiar faces like Al Michaels, Joe Buck, and Troy Aikman moved around while Mike Tirico took sole ownership of the lead Sunday Night Football play-by-play announcer.
Let’s see how they’ve done, starting out with the areas begging varied levels of improvement.
Amazon’s Thursday Night Football broadcast due featuring Al Michaels at play-by-play and Kirk Herbstreit is in a distant last place in terms of my game broadcast enjoyment.
I’m not getting on the “Grumpy Al” bandwagon. It’s a lazy take. He seems to be missing something, nonetheless, but he’s still one of the game’s most entertaining play-by-play announcers when you look at his entire body of work.
The Amazon broadcast’s weakest link is Herbstreit.
Herbstreit doesn’t belong on such a big stage in the NFL broadcasting realm. The former Ohio State quarterback turned ESPN color-commentator and College Football Game Day panelist doesn’t seem to have the tribal knowledge that would give him a sense of NFL history for the teams and players featured each Thursday.
People need to cut their teeth somewhere, but I’ll give you an example.
You’ve likely heard me broadcast Warsaw Tiger boys’ and girls’ basketball games on an area radio station. While I can provide energy to the moment, Roger Grossman – from years of coverage, and in-season coverage of almost every basketball game – can relate an in-game moment to something comparable to a similar game years ago.
Grossman also has a sense of Tiger basketball history strong enough to know when milestones are within reach. He can add to the moment.
I feel I can competently relay what’s going on in a Tiger basketball game, but like Herbstreit I am deficient in a sense of the program’s history.
Frankly, this is why I enjoy public address (PA) announcing more than any avocation role I have. My job as a PA announcer is to convey essential information, and on very rare occasion, announce an attained/eclipsed milestone. I enjoy the PA role immensely.
I am going to provide play-by-play coverage of four basketball games on Z939 in January and February of 2023. My partner wearing headset number 2 will be Shawna, my wife. She has a more challenging role than I have.
Shawna will be a color commentator. She knows her basketball much more than I do. I’ll tell you what happened, but she’ll tell you if the action is well-executed, and maybe how a play should have been executed, or each team’s in-game strengths and weaknesses in 15-second tranches as prep hoopsters
Move up and down the hardwood.
Despite lacking a sense of Tiger hoops history I’ve prided myself in maintaining a start-to-finish spirited energy level and – furthermore - engagement in previous seasons’ radio broadcasts.
Tony Romo, NFL analyst on the top-billed CBS broadcast team, however, cannot say the same for himself.
Romo’s Nostradamus-like predictions of offensive play selections were a refreshing novelty in his first season, but Romo’s weakness is his diminishing engagement when the offensive pace of an NFL game goes from a 40-30 shootout to a 21-14 slugfest.
Romo needs to take a page from Cris Collinsworth’s playbook and do his homework on offensive line play and defensive execution so – like Collinsworth – when the scoring pace of a game slows a little he’s not losing engagement due to his tendency to focus primarily on the two battling quarterbacks.
To be a little more fair than comparing Romo to the game’s color commentary standard (Collinsworth), Mark Sanchez, and Jonathan Vilma are actually more competent analysts than Romo is.
Herbstreit’s deficient sense of NFL game history and Romo’s lack of engagement in lower scoring games have resulted in the Amazon and CBS respective football coverage package leaves the viewer shortchanged.
Props, conversely, to ESPN for landing Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, whose chemistry can now be enjoyed among a bigger audience on ESPN’s Monday Night Football (MNF). They’re good enough to change my MNF viewing habits.
Last year I only watched MNF’s alt-broadcast with the Manning brothers. This season, however, when the Mannings have bye weeks, Buck and Aikman continue to be a great watch.
Google’s YouTube recently landed the NFL Sunday Ticket coverage in the 2023-2024 season. They will pay “the shield” at least $2 billion annually over the next seven NFL seasons. I’m eager to see what the package offers, and how affordable it is.
I currently subscribe to NFL+, a service within the NFL app where I can replay any NFL game I want almost immediately after its complete and set up for streaming. NFL+ also offers three formats: a condensed version weeding out almost all gaps between plays, full-length, commercial-free replay, and the above-field “all-22” view similar to the point of view coaches and analysts watch to analyze a completed game’s action.
All these goodies cost me around $90 for a full season, into the off-season.
Let’s face it, even if the Sunday Ticket is much less expensive than the product DirecTV offered through this season, the NFL+ package in the NFL app suits my schedule and allows me to address my typical Sunday demands tending to pull me away from just sitting and watching pro football action from 1 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. for 18 regular season weeks.
NFL+ allows me to set aside 40-to-60-minute tranches throughout the week to select the most watchable games I’ve missed when they were played in real time.
I am certain each network or streaming service will take a look at their strengths and weaknesses among their broadcast duos from top to bottom during the offseason. In the meantime the on-field NFL product is getting warmed up for a great postseason still worth viewing while broadcast duos get tweaked.
The NFL and its varied networks and streaming services shook up 2022 locking into big multi-year deals with the NFL, and there were some shake-ups among the top-billed duos in the announcers’ booths this season.
Some familiar faces like Al Michaels, Joe Buck, and Troy Aikman moved around while Mike Tirico took sole ownership of the lead Sunday Night Football play-by-play announcer.
Let’s see how they’ve done, starting out with the areas begging varied levels of improvement.
Amazon’s Thursday Night Football broadcast due featuring Al Michaels at play-by-play and Kirk Herbstreit is in a distant last place in terms of my game broadcast enjoyment.
I’m not getting on the “Grumpy Al” bandwagon. It’s a lazy take. He seems to be missing something, nonetheless, but he’s still one of the game’s most entertaining play-by-play announcers when you look at his entire body of work.
The Amazon broadcast’s weakest link is Herbstreit.
Herbstreit doesn’t belong on such a big stage in the NFL broadcasting realm. The former Ohio State quarterback turned ESPN color-commentator and College Football Game Day panelist doesn’t seem to have the tribal knowledge that would give him a sense of NFL history for the teams and players featured each Thursday.
People need to cut their teeth somewhere, but I’ll give you an example.
You’ve likely heard me broadcast Warsaw Tiger boys’ and girls’ basketball games on an area radio station. While I can provide energy to the moment, Roger Grossman – from years of coverage, and in-season coverage of almost every basketball game – can relate an in-game moment to something comparable to a similar game years ago.
Grossman also has a sense of Tiger basketball history strong enough to know when milestones are within reach. He can add to the moment.
I feel I can competently relay what’s going on in a Tiger basketball game, but like Herbstreit I am deficient in a sense of the program’s history.
Frankly, this is why I enjoy public address (PA) announcing more than any avocation role I have. My job as a PA announcer is to convey essential information, and on very rare occasion, announce an attained/eclipsed milestone. I enjoy the PA role immensely.
I am going to provide play-by-play coverage of four basketball games on Z939 in January and February of 2023. My partner wearing headset number 2 will be Shawna, my wife. She has a more challenging role than I have.
Shawna will be a color commentator. She knows her basketball much more than I do. I’ll tell you what happened, but she’ll tell you if the action is well-executed, and maybe how a play should have been executed, or each team’s in-game strengths and weaknesses in 15-second tranches as prep hoopsters
Move up and down the hardwood.
Despite lacking a sense of Tiger hoops history I’ve prided myself in maintaining a start-to-finish spirited energy level and – furthermore - engagement in previous seasons’ radio broadcasts.
Tony Romo, NFL analyst on the top-billed CBS broadcast team, however, cannot say the same for himself.
Romo’s Nostradamus-like predictions of offensive play selections were a refreshing novelty in his first season, but Romo’s weakness is his diminishing engagement when the offensive pace of an NFL game goes from a 40-30 shootout to a 21-14 slugfest.
Romo needs to take a page from Cris Collinsworth’s playbook and do his homework on offensive line play and defensive execution so – like Collinsworth – when the scoring pace of a game slows a little he’s not losing engagement due to his tendency to focus primarily on the two battling quarterbacks.
To be a little more fair than comparing Romo to the game’s color commentary standard (Collinsworth), Mark Sanchez, and Jonathan Vilma are actually more competent analysts than Romo is.
Herbstreit’s deficient sense of NFL game history and Romo’s lack of engagement in lower scoring games have resulted in the Amazon and CBS respective football coverage package leaves the viewer shortchanged.
Props, conversely, to ESPN for landing Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, whose chemistry can now be enjoyed among a bigger audience on ESPN’s Monday Night Football (MNF). They’re good enough to change my MNF viewing habits.
Last year I only watched MNF’s alt-broadcast with the Manning brothers. This season, however, when the Mannings have bye weeks, Buck and Aikman continue to be a great watch.
Google’s YouTube recently landed the NFL Sunday Ticket coverage in the 2023-2024 season. They will pay “the shield” at least $2 billion annually over the next seven NFL seasons. I’m eager to see what the package offers, and how affordable it is.
I currently subscribe to NFL+, a service within the NFL app where I can replay any NFL game I want almost immediately after its complete and set up for streaming. NFL+ also offers three formats: a condensed version weeding out almost all gaps between plays, full-length, commercial-free replay, and the above-field “all-22” view similar to the point of view coaches and analysts watch to analyze a completed game’s action.
All these goodies cost me around $90 for a full season, into the off-season.
Let’s face it, even if the Sunday Ticket is much less expensive than the product DirecTV offered through this season, the NFL+ package in the NFL app suits my schedule and allows me to address my typical Sunday demands tending to pull me away from just sitting and watching pro football action from 1 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. for 18 regular season weeks.
NFL+ allows me to set aside 40-to-60-minute tranches throughout the week to select the most watchable games I’ve missed when they were played in real time.
I am certain each network or streaming service will take a look at their strengths and weaknesses among their broadcast duos from top to bottom during the offseason. In the meantime the on-field NFL product is getting warmed up for a great postseason still worth viewing while broadcast duos get tweaked.
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