With the integration of NFL Network into ESPN’s ecosystem giving way to layoffs — Ryan Clark chief among them — Kyle Brandt seemed destined to see an uptick in responsibilities as football season approached.
Not only has the former executive producer of The Jim Rome Show joined the network’s car wash of morning studio shows, but ESPN also announced Friday that the 47-year-old will join the two-hour edition of NFL Live on Mondays this fall when Good Morning Football is on-site.
Currently, that translates to three weeks during the 2026 season.
Brandt has spent much of the past several months making clear he wanted a bigger presence at ESPN, going as far as admitting at this year’s NFL Draft that he’d reached out to essentially anyone at the network who would take his call, offering to pitch in wherever he could just to get in front of a camera.
Whatever those conversations amounted to, they’ve clearly paid off.
Once the season gets underway, the Monday edition of NFL Live will run from 3-5 p.m. ET and originate on-site from that week’s Monday Night Football location, simulcast on both ESPN and NFL Network, as it has in past seasons. Laura Rutledge will continue to anchor, flanked by Mina Kimes, Dan Orlovsky and Marcus Spears, with Adam Schefter chiming in remotely throughout the broadcast.
Peter Schrager — now anchoring his own afternoon show out of New York — no longer appears on those Monday editions.
Brandt remains a co-host of Good Morning Football alongside Jamie Erdahl and Manti Te’o, the show he’s anchored since it launched a decade ago, and he recently added NFL Play Action to his plate, a new Wednesday-night series on Paramount+ that debuted Sept. 9 with Peloton instructor Ally Love as his co-host.
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.