NBC looks to keep Cris Collinsworth, ESPN’s Jay Williams is upset by his own quote
Under a new deal being negotiated, NBC would keep Collinsworth in the booth through the 2025 season.
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It doesn’t look like Cris Collinsworth, the announcer Eagles fans love to hate, is leaving NBC anytime soon.
Despite reports that play-by-play announcer Al Michaels is expected to leave Sunday Night Football and take over Thursday Night Football on Amazon next season, NBC is negotiating with Collinsworth to keep him in the booth through the 2025 season, according to the New York Post’s Andrew Marchand.
NBC would pair Collinsworth with Mike Tirico, whom NBC hired away from ESPN in 2016 to one day replace Michaels in the booth. With Michaels on vacation last week, Tirico and Collinsworth did a solid job calling a dud of a game Sunday, with the Baltimore Ravens edging out the Cleveland Browns.
Next year, Thursday night NFL games will air exclusively on Amazon Prime, with longtime Sunday Night Football producer Fred Gaudelli overseeing the broadcast. Michaels’ contract ends after this season with him calling Super Bowl LVI in Los Angeles, and he is expected to join Amazon as their main play-by-play announcer, though no deal has been finalized.
That doesn’t mean Michaels’ days on NBC are over. According to Marchand, the longtime announcer will be offered a reduced role doing select Sunday Night Football games, including one playoff matchup.
What does that mean for Drew Brees? The former Super Bowl MVP, whom NBC hired after his retirement this year, will continue to appear in-studio as part of the network’s Football Night in America team, and will presumably still call Notre Dame football games alongside Tirico. NBC’s deal to air Fighting Irish games expires following the 2025 season.
Baring any more late-season flexes, here’s the remaining Sunday Night Football schedule this season. The NFL waits until the final week of the season to schedule the network’s Week 18 game.
» READ MORE: Fox’s Eagles promo will likely draw fine, turned into Trump website
ESPN analyst upset at his employer
It was easy to feel bad for the poor soul running ESPN’s popular college football account on Wednesday.
ESPN deleted a tweet after longtime NBA analyst and former Duke standout Jay Williams complained that his quote about new LSU coach Brian Kelly was taken out of context.
Kelly has been criticized widely in sports media circles for abandoning Notre Dame midseason to take the head coaching job in LSU after the school and former head coach Ed Orgeron agreed to part ways.
The tweet on ESPN’s college football account, with 2.8 million followers, featured a graphic quoting Williams opining on Kelly’s move by saying, “I think that’s cowardly.” It was deleted after Williams called it out.
The comment itself was pulled from Williams’ appearance Wednesday on his ESPN Radio show Keyshawn, JWill & Max. As Williams pointed out himself on Twitter, his full comment offered a bit more nuance, but the show quoted him accurately on social media as saying, “I think that’s cowardly.”
Williams said Notre Dame players Kelly recruited are facing the unlikely prospect of entering the College Football Playoff without a coach because he “took a bag somewhere else and couldn’t even stay on board just for another month... I think that’s cowardly, man.”
Williams has garnered a lot of attention recently. In June, Brooklyn Nets star Kevin Durant accused Williams of lying about being confronted by Durant at a holiday party over comparisons to NBA finals MVP Giannis Antetokounmpo. Williams said he stood by his story.
Also in June, Williams claimed he was hacked after incorrectly posting that Ime Udoka was the Boston Celtics’ first head coach of color. He was the sixth, with the others including current Sixers head coach Doc Rivers, who won an NBA title in Boston.
Quick hits
Fox News has found its new favorite NBA player. As the Washington Post’s Candace Buckner points out, Boston Celtics reserve player Enes Kanter Freedom has appeared on Fox News multiple times this week, where he has been given a reliable platform to bash NBA star LeBron James (who was famously told to “shut up and dribble” by host Laura Ingram). No one on Fox has asked Freedom about his position on vaccines — he’s been an outspoken advocate for people to receive their COVID-19 shots.
The Eagles hope to keep their slim postseason hopes alive Sunday with a win over the New York Jets. Calling the game on CBS are Andrew Catalon and Hall of Fame wide receiver James Lofton, who spent the final year of his career playing for the Eagles. Amanda Balionis will handle sideline reporting duties.
NBC Sports Philadelphia continues to have their announcers call Sixers and Flyers road games remotely from their studios inside the Wells Fargo Center. That doesn’t sit well with a lot of fans, including 97.5 The Fanatic morning show host John Kincade.
Longtime NFL reporter Peter King received the Frozen Cold Takes treatment for a doozy of a column he wrote way back in 2000, where he made the case that the Patriots shouldn’t trade for Bill Belichick (who at the time was under contract with the New York Jets) in favor of Tom Donahoe, who is currently the senior director of player personnel for the Eagles.