Since the announcement earlier this year that Netflix would broadcast two Christmas Day NFL games, it’s been a popular parlor game amongst sports media types to guess who the streamer would tap to fill its booths. Today, we have an answer.
Per a report by Andrew Marchand of The Athletic on Thursday, the father-son duo of Ian and Noah Eagle will fill the role of play-by-play announcer for the pair of holiday games. Noah, who currently serves as the lead play-by-play voice for NBC’s Big Ten football coverage, will call the early game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Kansas City Chiefs. His father, Ian, currently slotted on the No. 2 NFL broadcast team for CBS, will call the late game between the Baltimore Ravens and Houston Texans.
Joining the Eagle family in Netflix’s Christmas Day booths are a trio of known commodities for NFL viewers, though fans won’t be used to seeing two of them in the broadcast booth.
Nate Burleson and J.J. Watt will form a three-man booth alongside Noah Eagle for the Steelers-Chiefs game. Both Burleson and Watt currently serve as studio analysts together on The NFL Today for CBS.
Fox’s No. 2 NFL analyst Greg Olsen has been selected to work alongside Ian Eagle for the Ravens-Texans game later in the day. Olsen, rather infamously now, was demoted from Fox’s lead team this season to make room for Tom Brady. In an interesting detail from the report, Fox considered preventing Olsen from calling the Netflix game, though eventually allowed it.
According to Marchand’s report, Netflix will also add a sideline reporter to each broadcast team as well, though those names were not reported.
Prior to the start of NFL season, it was reported by John Ourand of Puck that NFL Network’s Rich Eisen will serve as the studio host for the Christmas Day games alongside other NFL Network talent that has yet to be announced.
CBS will produce the games for Netflix, so it’s no surprise that several members of its NFL talent roster will appear on the broadcasts. It is notable, however, that they have tabbed two studio analysts to do it. Burleson, for his part, has called games in the booth for Nickelodeon alongside Noah Eagle, so that pair has some chemistry to fall back on. However, J.J. Watt will be completely new to the broadcast booth. He will, of course, have the added advantage of calling the team his younger brother T.J. plays for, the Pittsburgh Steelers.
As for the other booth, though neither has called a game together, both Ian Eagle and Greg Olsen have plenty of experience under their belts for their respective networks.
The set of Christmas Day games marks Netflix’s first big splash into live sports programming. The streamer, which paid a reported $75 million for the two games, has aired many smaller one-off events in the past, but nothing that would compare to a full day of NFL programming on a major holiday.
About Drew Lerner
Drew Lerner is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and an aspiring cable subscriber. He previously covered sports media for Sports Media Watch. Future beat writer for the Oasis reunion tour.