Kirk Herbstreit has a new contract with Amazon, though it may be the first extension in recent memory to include a Sean McVay clause.
According to Andrew Marchand of The Athletic, Prime Video has agreed to extend Herbstreit as the analyst on Thursday Night Football, with the new deal running multiple seasons at more than $10 million annually. The catch is that Amazon built in the flexibility to move on from Herbstreit should one of its preferred candidates, most notably the Rams head coach, decide he’s ready to trade the headset on the sideline for one in the booth. The length of the extension is shorter than Herbstreit’s original five-year contract, though the exact term hasn’t been confirmed.
Amazon’s interest in McVay dates back to the very beginning of its TNF era. Weeks after the Rams won Super Bowl LVI in February 2022, McVay was scheduled to sit down with Prime Video about the analyst job, with Amazon reportedly willing to go as high as $100 million over five years, before he told ESPN’s Adam Schefter he wasn’t pursuing television and was committed to defending the title. With McVay out of the picture and Troy Aikman — also formerly an Amazon target — headed to ESPN, Amazon pivoted to Herbstreit, signing him to a deal worth more than $10 million per year to pair with Al Michaels, while ESPN kept him on College GameDay and its top college booth with a three-year extension of its
Both of those deals were built to run five years, with ESPN’s three-year extension stacked on top of the two seasons already left on Herbstreit’s contract, which is why his Amazon and ESPN agreements are expiring in tandem now. Herbstreit’s new deal makes him the first of this season’s high-profile NFL analysts in a walk year to secure his future. He entered this season as one of three marquee NFL analysts in the final year of their contracts, alongside ESPN’s Troy Aikman and Fox’s Greg Olsen, a group that includes two recent Sports Emmy winners for top game analyst and one of the voices of this season’s Super Bowl. CBS, meanwhile, is still deciding what comes next with Tony Romo after his OWI arrest in Wisconsin, and Joe Buck said this week that he’s hopeful ESPN can get a new deal done with Aikman, his longtime partner.
Herbstreit isn’t entirely in the clear, either. His ESPN contract, which covers his seat on College GameDay and his role as the network’s top college football game analyst, also runs out after this season, and Marchand reports that ESPN won’t take it up until the college season is over. Despite a weekly itinerary that shuttles him from Thursday nights in NFL stadiums to Saturday mornings on the GameDay set and Saturday nights in the ABC booth, the 57-year-old has been adamant that he has no interest in giving up any of it. He told The Athletic’s Chris Vannini last year that he had seriously considered dropping GameDay to lighten his load, but was reenergized by Pat McAfee’s arrival on the set, and said he hoped to extend with both Amazon and ESPN.
“I’m loving the NFL. I would never want to leave that job on Thursday, and I love GameDay,” he said. “I can’t imagine not sitting in that seat. It’s a dream to have all three of these. I hope to be able to sign an extension at some point with both Amazon and ESPN.”
Amazon’s contingency planning isn’t limited to the analyst chair, either. Michaels, 81, has been working on one-year deals since his original three-year contract expired and confirmed in January that he’d return for 2026, while Prime Video has long been viewed as eyeing Ian Eagle as his eventual successor.
With outs attached to Herbstreit’s deal and a play-by-play voice going year to year, Amazon has given itself some stability, as well as flexibility going forward.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.