Troy Aikman and Joe Buck shine during Eagles’ win against Vikings on ‘Monday Night Football’

It might be costing ESPN about $33 million a year, but Joe Buck and Troy Aikman excelled on Monday Night Football during the Eagles’ 24-7 win over the Minnesota Vikings.

Thanks to their 20-year history calling NFL games together (including six Super Bowls), Buck and Aikman have injected Monday Night Football with a big-game feel it’s long desired, helped by a playoff atmosphere at Lincoln Financial Field that came through during the broadcast.

As usual, Aikman offered simple, straightforward observations during the game, like when he praised a well-thrown pass by Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts over the head of a Vikings defender on what turned out to be an incomplete pass. He also pointed out that Minnesota Vikings wide receiver Justin Jefferson was to blame for a third-quarter interception thrown in the end zone by Kirk Cousins.

“He goes behind [Darius] Slay,” Aikman said of Jefferson’s route, which allowed the Eagles cornerback to cut it off and snag the football. “Easy interception, and that’s a cardinal rule for a receiver. You just can’t do that.”

Aikman also remains one of the few NFL analysts willing to criticize bad calls made by the referees. In the first quarter, after wide receiver DeVonta Smith was called for offensive pass interference, Aikman clearly explained why he thought the refs made a mistake.

“He gets out of the way,” Aikman said of Smith. “That’s not a good call at all.”

Buck was equally as good. The longtime announcer gets an outsized amount of criticism from Philly sports fans (he was driven off Twitter for a year due to harsh comments from Phillies fans), but one thing he’s learned in his two decades calling NFL games is when not to talk. During Jalen Hurts’ 26 yard touchdown run late in the second quarter, Buck allowed the images and the noise at the Linc to do the bulk of the storytelling.

Buck also gave a shout-out to Merrill Reese, who has called Eagles games on the radio since 1977 and is by far the longest tenured announcer in the NFL.

Buck said Reese visited the Monday Night Football booth at halftime and praised Hurts, saying, “That’s as good as I’ve seen a quarterback play here in a long time.”

“If he says it, I’ll go with it,” Buck said during the broadcast, with Aikman adding,” He’s pretty much seen them all, right?”

Buck told The Inquirer in 2019 he’s a huge fan of Reese, in part because he reminds him of his own father, legendary broadcaster Jack Buck.

“He’s great. His emotions are on his sleeve,” Buck said. “I almost hear some of my dad because I feel like there’s almost a crackle in his voice due to excitement when the team’s playing well, or the dejection when somebody completes a big pass or gets a touchdown against Philly.”

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With overlapping games scheduled, ESPN experimented with its Monday Night Football broadcast by showing a split screen with live action from both games.

It didn’t go over well.

ESPN went to the split screen during the Tennessee Titans-Buffalo Bills game just as Jalen Hurts scored his first of two rushing touchdowns. But ESPN announcer Steve Levy didn’t note the touchdown during the broadcast, opting instead to continue calling Titans-Bills.

“Memo to ESPN: Stop with the damn split screens. If we want to watch the Eagles game, we’ll flip the channel,” longtime Buffalo News columnist Mike Harrington complained on Twitter.

What seemed to work better was when ESPN cut to the studio and allowed SportsCenter host Scott Van Pelt to call an update, which felt like what happens every Sunday on Fox and CBS.

ESPN’s going to need to get it right, because beginning next year, the network will have three overlapping Monday Night Football games per season. It might seem annoying now, but it’s a better option than having games where kickoff pushes past 10 p.m. Eastern.