Dave O’Brien isn’t going anywhere, but he’ll be doing a little less of it.
According to MassLive’s Sean McAdam, O’Brien has quietly signed a two-year extension to remain NESN’s play-by-play voice for Red Sox broadcasts through at least the 2028 season, with his previous deal set to expire at the end of this year.
O’Brien, who turned 63 earlier this month, had the option to sign for a longer term but chose the shorter deal on purpose. McAdam reported that O’Brien’s wife was sent to the hospital for several weeks last year, and that three-plus decades of play-by-play work — much of it spent away from home for long stretches of the season — has left him increasingly aware of the time he feels he owes his family.
As part of the new agreement, O’Brien’s workload will shrink slightly next season — if there is one. How much of that role Mike Monaco assumes remains to be seen, especially with Monaco just having picked up Friday night college football duties for ESPN alongside Jordan Rodgers and Dana Boyle, on top of an existing schedule that already spans MLB, the NHL, college baseball, the Little League World Series, tennis majors, in addition to his fill-in work on Red Sox broadcasts for NESN.
O’Brien’s tenure in the Red Sox booth began under circumstances NESN would probably like fans to forget. The network tapped him to replace fan-favorite Don Orsillo ahead of the 2016 season, then compounded the awkwardness by announcing O’Brien’s hiring mere minutes before Orsillo took the air for what turned out to be his final broadcast in the booth. Orsillo landed in San Diego, where his pairing with Mark Grant topped Awful Announcing’s own 2025 MLB local broadcaster rankings, while O’Brien’s Red Sox booth came in 11th.
A decade later, O’Brien has established a steady, enduring presence in Boston, supplementing his Red Sox duties with national college basketball and football assignments for ESPN. A new deal carrying him through 2028 suggests NESN continues to regard him as the right steward for the booth.
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.