‘Sunday Night Football’ announcer Mike Tirico on calling Eagles games, eating pancakes with Harry Kalas

Mike Tirico has a lot of history with the Eagles.

The NBC play-by-play announcer, who will call the Birds’ monster matchup against the Dallas Cowboys on Sunday Night Football, has called 20 Eagles games over the course of his career. That dates back to his time working at ESPN, where he often found himself at places like Chickie’s & Pete’s (which was featured on Sunday Night Football earlier this season) alongside his former colleagues Ron Jaworski and Jon Gruden.

“I’ve loved covering these Eagles games over the years,” Tirico told The Inquirer. “Being a kid who grew up in New York, knowing the passion for Philly sports and getting to experience it firsthand. ... For me it’s been a lot of fun to be a part of the Philly scene over the last 20 years or so.”

Tirico, Cris Collinsworth and the entire NBC crew will be in Dallas to call Sunday’s game, but the trip to Texas oddly brings him closer to another Philly connection. Tirico is a Syracuse alum, and his roommate for two years was Todd Kalas, the radio voice for the Houston Astros and son of legendary Phillies announcer Harry Kalas.

During their time as college broadcasters, Tirico and Kalas called a Syracuse-Temple football game at Veterans Stadium in October 1986 (which Tirico pointed out Syracuse won on a Tim Vesling field goal as time expired). Tirico spent the night at Kalas’ house the night before the game, and ended up at their breakfast table the following morning.

“Harry Kalas was sitting across the table and we’re all having pancakes that Todd’s mom made, and Harry said to me, ‘Mike, could you pass the pancake syrup, please?’ That was like one of the great moments of breakfast in my life,” Tirico recalled. “That voice that I heard on NFL films, and that voice I heard listening to WCAU, a Clear Channel station when I was living in the Northeast loving baseball and radio as a kid, that voice asked me for the pancake syrup in his own house, which was the damn coolest thing ever.”

In a phone conversation earlier this week, Tirico talked about the expansion of flex scheduling and an idea to improve officiating in the NFL after a wild ending in last week’s Sunday Night Football game.

With just three games remaining after Eagles-Cowboys, it’s likely the NFL won’t use flexible scheduling at all this season on Sunday Night Football, outside of Week 18. If that happens, it’ll be the first time the league keeps NBC’s schedule untouched since 1997.

Tirico said he was a fan of the NFL’s decision to expand flex scheduling this season to Monday Night Football, something he wishes the league was able to do during his 10 seasons calling the package on ESPN. But that doesn’t mean he was fully comfortable with the league’s decision to move the Eagles’ Week 15 game against the Seattle Seahawks from Sunday afternoon to Monday night.

“I feel bad for the Philly fans who are going to Seattle. That’s a tough one,” Tirico said, noting he’s seen an increase in fans traveling to road games. “If you’re a Philly fan and you’ve never been to Seattle when you make those plans, now that kind of gets thrown away, because now you’re talking about taking two days off from work to make it happen.”

“I’ll tell you who loves that flex — Kansas City,” Tirico added. “They went from playing Monday night against New England to Sunday early afternoon. It got Kansas City 42 more hours at home.”

Instead of moving previously scheduled games around, Tirico would take a note from European soccer leagues like the Premiere League, where the complete schedule isn’t set before the season begins. Tirico’s suggestion would be to start the season with the first eight weeks scheduled, then announce the rest in five-week increments.

“We’ve done it for Week 18, and it’s worked wonderfully,” Tirico said. “Given the way the league changes one year to the next, more than ever a cool team can get hot. Or one of those gold standards, like the Patriots, can fall off the map of relevance very quickly.”

» READ MORE: Eagles fans who planned on traveling to Seattle are angry after the Seahawks game is flexed to 'Monday Night Football'

As is the case every season, there’s been a lot of criticism of the officiating in the NFL. Tirico dealt with it firsthand last week, when officials missed what appeared to most viewers to be two blown pass interference calls late in the Green Bay Packers’ win over the Kansas City Chiefs.

To their credit, NBC’s crew — including Collinsworth and rules analyst Terry McAulay— didn’t shy away and did a great job explaining and focusing on what the referees missed.

“There is no way that was not pass interference on Marquez Valdes-Scantling on the deep ball Mahomes threw in the fourth quarter,” Tirico said. “That was very blatant and very clear.”

Tirico said officials have made some “obvious mistakes” at big moments this season, but defended them as a whole for being the only group on the field expected to be perfect. To help officials, Tirico suggested a tweak to the NFL rules that would allow coaches to challenge a penalty when an egregious mistake has been made.

“Andy Reid should be able to challenge that. Have one challenge a game and be able to clean it up,” Tirico said. “One opportunity, judgment call, look at it and if you’re wrong, you lose a time-out or you lose 10 yards. We can come up with anything. But I’d love to arm the coaches with one of those, just to give a little bit of clarity to those situations at the end of a game.”

The NFL has toyed with allowing pass interference calls or noncalls to be challenged. Following a widely mocked pass interference call that was missed during the 2019 NFC Championship game, the league allowed fouls to be reviewable during the following season. But the NFL set a high standard to overturn bad or missed calls, which frustrated coaches, players, and viewers.

Out of 101 pass interference calls or noncalls that were reviewed during the 2019 season, just 24 were overturned, according to ESPN, and the NFL hasn’t attempted anything similar since.