The NFL is heading to Brazil in Week 1 for a Friday night game airing on Peacock and NBC will be using its top college football team to call the game.
Per a Wednesday release, Noah Eagle, Todd Blackledge, and Kaylee Hartung will call the Packers-Eagles game, which will exclusively stream on Peacock.
Eagle and Blackledge called January’s Browns-Texans AFC Wild Card game for NBC, and also called a Bengals-Steelers game in December for the network. Hartung, Prime Video’s sideline reporter for Thursday Night Football, worked as the sideline reporter for the Dolphins-Chiefs AFC Wild Card game earlier this year, also a Peacock-exclusive.
NBC’s top broadcast team of Mike Tirico, Cris Collinsworth, and Melissa Stark already have two Week 1 games on their calendar, with the season opener between the Ravens and Chiefs and the Sunday Night Football premiere between the Rams and Lions sandwiched around the Brazil game. The trio going from Kansas City to Sao Paulo to Detroit over the course of several days was probably a bit too much travel.
It’s still unknown who will call NBC’s Week 2 primetime Big Ten game between Colorado and Nebraska on Saturday night. The network has a Notre Dame broadcast that afternoon, so the network’s broadcast team for Notre Dame games (which still hasn’t been officially announced following Jac Collinsworth’s reported demotion in favor of Dan Hicks) won’t be able to pick up the slack. Flying Eagle and Blackledge from Brazil to call the game in Lincoln seems unlikely, so the assignment will likely fall to another team on the (still-to-be-announced) NBC college football lineup.
About Joe Lucia
I hate your favorite team. I also sort of hate most of my favorite teams.