Credit: NFL Network
By Sam Neumann on

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Jason Kelce was supposed to be the wild card in ESPN’s new NFL Network booth, but by Sunday evening in London, he looked like its centerpiece.

Sunday’s broadcast of Colts-Commanders at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium marked Kelce’s debut as a game analyst, the first of four NFL Network games he’ll call alongside Dave Pasch and Kurt Warner this season. The pairing wasn’t always in the cards. When The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported in May that Pasch had the inside track on the play-by-play job, the analyst seat appeared to be a choice between Kelce, the high-risk, high-reward newcomer, and Warner, the steady hand who had spent recent seasons as NFL Network’s lead analyst. ESPN ultimately chose not to choose, and heading into the opener, Warner acknowledged that settling into a three-man booth would be an adjustment for him, to say nothing of Kelce, who had never called a game.

Listening to the broadcast, you’d never have guessed Kelce was the neophyte in the booth. He grabbed the wheel almost from the opening kickoff, and for the most part, the broadcast was better for it. Between diagnosing why the Colts’ offensive line looked so uncomfortable in pass protection, dissecting a third-down blitz that went completely unaccounted for, pinpointing the crossed signals that led to another sack, and chronicling Washington rookie right guard Matt Gulbin’s first career start, which included getting steamrolled by DeForest Buckner on a run that lost four yards, Kelce gave viewers a front-row seat to the war being waged at the line of scrimmage.

That command of line play is why, when ESPN signed him to a three-year, $24 million deal after he retired in 2024, many expected him to become this generation’s answer to John Madden. Instead, his NFL role was largely confined to a supporting seat on Monday Night Countdown, while ESPN turned him loose as a roving everyman everywhere else. He hosted a five-episode late-night show out of Philadelphia’s Union Transfer, served as a special correspondent for the NHL Stadium Series, reported from beneath the rotating green at TGL and caddied at the Masters Par 3 Contest, a cameo that golf fans did not take kindly to. Kelce has embraced the eclectic résumé, explaining that he’s simply seizing the chance to try things he never could as a player, all while he and his brother Travis reportedly finalized a roughly $100 million creator deal with Amazon built around New Heights.

Calling a game, though, is an entirely different discipline, and there was plenty of reason to be skeptical. When his name first surfaced for ESPN’s No. 2 booth in May, we raised the specter of the experiment joining infamous Monday Night Football misfires like Dennis Miller and the BoogerMobile, and even after ESPN settled on Pasch and Warner, Kelce’s place in the booth remained “fluid” until the network made it official just weeks before the season.

After one game, those fears looked unfounded.

His finest moment came after Washington, already without Jayden Daniels, lost Marcus Mariota to injury and was forced to turn to a seventh-round rookie as its third-string quarterback. Kelce explained that every backup brings a different cadence, which is why false starts tend to pile up when an unfamiliar quarterback takes over, before drawing on his own experience snapping to Nate Sudfeld in Philadelphia.

“I had a snap like a rocket… Fumble; everybody’s yelling at Nate Sudfeld. I’m like, ‘Dude, I am so sorry.'”

His other highlight came later in the game, when a pass deflected off Cam Bynum’s hands on what should have been an interception and fell right to Commanders offensive lineman Brandon Coleman, who rumbled upfield on an improbable catch-and-run that sent Kelce into a full-blown frenzy in the booth.

Warner, by contrast, spent much of the morning relegated to a supporting role. His commentary was sound whenever he spoke, but too often it duplicated territory Kelce had already covered. Washington’s quarterback predicament should have been tailor-made for him. Few analysts are better positioned to articulate the bewildering experience of being thrust into an NFL game with little preparation than a former undrafted quarterback who went from stocking grocery shelves to league MVP. Instead, his initial reaction amounted to a perfunctory observation that it’s difficult for a young player who likely hasn’t taken many practice reps. When Pasch eventually set him up to elaborate, Warner offered a more incisive point about coaches scrambling to retrofit a game plan around a quarterback it was never designed for, but he never reached for the personal perspective that made Kelce’s contributions so compelling.

He also mistakenly called Colts receiver Josh Downs “Josh Dobbs.”

Too often, though, Pasch’s attempts to bring Warner into the conversation were cut off by Kelce, who seemed determined to beat his partner to every point. When Daniel Jones threw an interception off his back foot, Kelce jumped in first with an instant breakdown of the mechanics before Warner could add his own perspective. Kelce even talked over Pasch’s call of Athan Kaliakmanis’s first-career NFL touchdown, before immediately asking for Warner’s thoughts.

The issue was rarely what Warner said, but how infrequently he got to say it.

Kelce wasn’t without his blemishes, either. He slipped at one point and referred to Washington by its former nickname. And after mentioning that he’d gone toe-to-toe with Commanders defensive tackle Daron Payne countless times during his career, he left that thread largely untouched, which felt like a missed opportunity for an analyst whose entire value proposition is his firsthand knowledge of life in the trenches.

Next week will provide another test, as the crew remains in London for Eagles-Jaguars. Kelce will be calling a game involving the franchise he anchored for 13 seasons, only days after apologizing to Bears fans for referring to Philadelphia as “we” on Monday Night Countdown. Judging by his debut, his biggest challenge may not be neutrality so much as leaving enough room for Warner.

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.

View all posts by Sam Neumann