The Monday Night Football booth will have two sideline reporters moving forward.
ESPN has promoted Laura Rutledge to become a full-time member of the Joe Buck, Troy Aikman, and Lisa Salters crew. Rutledge previously filled in for Salters when she stepped away to handle personal matters this past season. With Rutledge now on the No. 1 team, Peter Schrager and Katie George will join Chris Fowler, Dan Orlovsky, and Louis Riddick for five games — the four weeks Monday Night Football features doubleheaders (Weeks 2, 4, 6, and 7) plus the Saturday doubleheader in Week 18.
ESPN also announced that Salters signed a contract extension to remain with the network as she enters her 14th season.
Under the ESPN-NFL megadeal, MNF doubleheaders will be eliminated. But that won’t take effect until the deal receives regulatory approval from the Department of Justice, which could take 12 to 24 months, according to Scott Hanson. So the MNF doubleheader will continue for this season and possibly next.
While Rutledge would have had limited opportunities with ESPN’s No. 2 team, she’ll now have extensive experience working alongside Buck, Aikman, and Salters. This gives her two full seasons with the top crew before ESPN hosts the Super Bowl in 2027.
Rutledge signed a multi-year extension with ESPN earlier this year to continue hosting NFL Live, which she’s anchored since 2020. She’ll keep her other responsibilities, covering major NFL and college games, events like the NFL Draft and the Masters, plus her SEC Nation hosting role.
While she has been passed over for more high-profile roles hosting Monday NFL Countdown (Scott Van Pelt) and Sunday NFL Countdown (Mike Greenberg) in recent years, Rutledge is clearly a valued member of ESPN’s NFL coverage. Her promotion to the top MNF crew comes as the network gears up for its first-ever Super Bowl broadcast at the end of the 2026 NFL season.
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.