Amid NFL broadcasting shuffle, Eagles announcer Merrill Reese remains a familiar voice

Despite just turning 79, Merrill Reese can’t wait to return to the Eagles booth he has called home since 1977, making him by far the longest-tenured announcer in the NFL.

But optimism about the team is nothing new for Reese, a Temple graduate and lifelong Birds fan who has turned down many television jobs over the years so he could remain here in Philadelphia calling Eagles games. Earlier this year, he signed a new contract with WIP-FM (94.1) that will keep him in the booth through the 2024 season.

“There’s no false excitement in my voice. What you hear is totally what I feel,” Reese said. “I feel like I can do this for a long time to come. I just absolutely love every single second of it.”

The Eagles open their season on Sunday against the Detroit Lions at Ford Field. For the first time since 2020, Reese and his longtime broadcast partner Mike Quick won’t call any games remotely — they’ll travel with the team to call every road game in person. So will WIP host Howard Eskin, who once again will report from the Eagles sideline.

The popular broadcast duo is entering their 25th season together in the booth, and Reese credits his long friendship with Quick — which includes regular trips together to the golf course — as the reason the two have had such good on-air chemistry for so many years.

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“Even when Mike was a player, he was somebody I would speak to in the locker room because he was always such a good guy and such an easy person to be around,” Reese said. “We just like each other, and I think that comes through on the air.”

While Reese and Quick are familiar voices, three of the top four NFL TV broadcast booths have new announcing crews this season, thanks to a multimillion-dollar shuffle that occurred during the offseason.

On Fox, which will air about half of this season’s Eagles games (including the opener against the Lions), New Jersey native Kevin Burkhardt and former Carolina Panthers tight end Greg Olsen now occupy the network’s top booth. They succeed Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, who spent 20 years together at Fox before jumping ship to ESPN during the offseason.

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Burkhardt and Olsen will call all of Fox’s major NFL games, including Super Bowl LVII in Glendale, Ariz., in February, and will almost certainly be in the booth for the Eagles’ late-season matchup against the Dallas Cowboys on Christmas Eve. The Eagles will probably have some games covered by former Birds quarterback Mark Sanchez, who returns for his second season as an NFL analyst on Fox, paired with play-by-play announcer Kevin Kugler.

There might be more shuffling next year for Fox after it announced that Tampa Bay Buccaneers quarterback and seven-time Super Bowl champ Tom Brady will join the network and call games after he retires. Fox is reporting paying Brady $375 million over 10 years, so the 45-year-old will probably be hard for Eagles fans to miss once he finally hangs up his jersey.

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CBS will broadcast only three Eagles games this season, but for the second straight year, don’t expect to hear Jim Nantz and former Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo in the booth for those.

The Eagles have three games scheduled for CBS — Week 4 against the Jacksonville Jaguars, Week 8 against the Pittsburgh Steelers, and Week 11 at the Indianapolis Colts — and none are scheduled to be the network’s top game.

Longtime CBS broadcaster Phil Simms, whom Romo replaced in the booth in 2017, is really high on the Eagles and has been impressed with the development of quarterback Jalen Hurts.

“I followed him in Alabama, out to Oklahoma, and into the NFL. I think he’s physically gotten better throwing the football every single year,” Simms said. “He’s never going to be Aaron Rodgers, but that offense they’ve constructed down in Philadelphia is pretty tough to defend. ... It’s going to be tough to deal with this team on both sides of the football.”

There’s always the chance the Eagles could draw Phillies television announcer Tom McCarthy, who will rejoin CBS for this ninth season calling NFL games once NBC Sports Philadelphia’s coverage of baseball ends in early October. McCarthy, who filled in alongside Romo last season when Nantz was out, will be paired with former Giants running back Tiki Barber.

A new wrinkle this season is Amazon’s cannonball into NFL broadcasting, thanks to the tech giant’s new deal to stream Thursday Night Football games on its Amazon Prime Video service. Unlike Apple’s foray into baseball this season, Amazon has assembled an A-team of talent — former Sunday Night Football announcer Al Michaels and ESPN’s top college football analyst, Kirk Herbstreit — to call games this season.

“Even though it’s a different platform, the one thing I think you can count on is that we are not going to reinvent the wheel,” Michaels said. “We’re going to do the games. People are going to tune in to watch the games, and we’re not going to do anything that’s crazy.”

Amazon’s schedule is decent this season, and kicks off big in Week 2 with Chargers-Chiefs on Sept. 15. Eagles fans will need to be Amazon Prime subscribers (or just subscribe to Amazon Prime Video) to stream any of the national games. But when the Eagles visit the Houston Texans on Nov. 3, that game will also air locally on Fox29.

Thanks to last year’s playoff appearance and the buzz surrounding the Birds this offseason, the league scheduled two huge Eagles home games on NBC’s Sunday Night Football this season — Oct. 16 against the Cowboys and Nov. 27 against the Green Bay Packers.

Moving up to handle play-by-play on Sunday Night Football is Mike Tirico, who left ESPN after 25 years in 2016 to become Michaels’ successor. Another new face will be Melissa Stark, the former Monday Night Football reporter who takes over sideline duties after Michelle Tafoya’s departure following the Super Bowl.

A familiar face will be longtime analyst Cris Collinsworth, the announcer Eagles fans love to hate, who signed a new contract this offseason to remain on Sunday Night Football through the 2025 season.

“I always look forward to coming back to Philly, it’s always one of my favorite trips,” Collinsworth said. “I know a lot of people there, and I take a lot of good-natured stuff in Philadelphia.”

“The fan base is knowledgeable, demanding and passionate,” Tirico added. “What more do you want out of folks who set the atmosphere and the tone for games?”

The Eagles are scheduled to play two Monday Night Football games this season, including their home opener against the Minnesota Vikings in Week 2 on Sept. 19, which will air on ABC. Buck and Aikman will be on hand to that one along with the Nov. 14 game against Washington on ESPN.

Over the years, Eagles fans have developed an irrational hatred of Buck, who is widely considered one of the best play-by-play announcers in sports (angry Phillies fans once led him to deactivate his Twitter account). Reese said he has a great relationship with Buck, who has spoken about his fondness for the Eagles announcer and how he reminds him of his father, the late Jack Buck.

“Eagles fans are just so passionate about the team, and then the fact he’s up there with Troy Aikman, and Dallas is Dallas,” Reese said of Buck. “But believe me, he doesn’t hate the Eagles. He’s an impartial broadcaster and gives you his best and most journalistically-honest call on every game.”

ESPN is also bringing back its alternative telecast featuring Peyton and Eli Manning, which will kick off in Week 1 on ESPN when the Seattle Seahawks host the Denver Broncos and former Seahawks quarterback Russell Wilson. The Manningcast will telecast during 10 games this season, but neither Eagles game made the cut. Though after Peyton and Eli talked through last year’s Week 3 blowout loss to the Cowboys, maybe that’s a good thing.