NFL on ESPN on SNL Credit: SNL
By Sam Neumann on

Saturday Night Live took a swing at spoofing an NFL broadcast on Saturday night. The sketch never found its footing.

The sketch cast James Austin Johnson as Joe Buck, Andrew Dismukes as Troy Aikman, and host Teyana Taylor as Lisa Salters during what was framed as a pregame segment for Denver’s AFC Championship Game matchup with New England. The setup hinged on Bo Nix’s ankle injury, which left Jarrett Stidham as the starter, while the central gag had the ESPN broadcast repeatedly hijacked by promotional reads for a fake Disney+ series, Quefs, billed as “the steamy new lesbian culinary drama” in which “these queer chefs have America gagged and gooped.”

Salters repeatedly wrote off the Broncos before the game even started, telling viewers Denver “had a great season and shouldn’t hold back their heads, just hold their heads high.” When Buck reminded her that the game hadn’t started yet, she responded, “I mean, come on. They ain’t got no quarterback.” Later, she interviewed someone she thought was a fan who turned out to be Stidham himself. “Congrats on a great season and better luck next year,” she told him. When he tried to say the Broncos could still win, she cut him off with “Yeah, but Jarrett, come on.”

From there, the sketch largely abandoned football altogether. It stretched past four minutes while cycling through increasingly elaborate Quefs reads, including a Talking Quefs after-show hosted by Renee Rapp and Trevor Noah, with Bo Nix inexplicably listed as a guest. The closing beat had Buck noting that the AFC Championship would air on CBS — not ESPN — before ESPN’s programming moved on to the “world cornhole quarterfinals.”

By the time it ended, sports media had already started tearing it apart.

The sketch had obvious problems. Johnson and Dismukes bore no resemblance to Buck or Aikman. SNL used ESPN’s Monday Night Football branding for a game that would air on CBS, which meant passing on Jim Nantz and Tony Romo, even though the latter has been a punching bag for weeks. Maybe SNL viewed Romo’s decline — and the general noise around CBS — as low-hanging fruit, but they also needed ESPN to make the Disney/Hulu promotional joke work. And once that decision was made, the show was stuck with Buck and Aikman impressions that never found a rhythm.

The “Quefs” promotional gag itself wasn’t a terrible idea. As a quick jab at Disney’s corporate sprawl and ESPN’s relentless cross-promotion, it might have landed. But stretched over four minutes — with no strong impressions or character work to carry it — the joke wore thin fast.

SNL has executed NFL sketches that work. This wasn’t one of them.

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