Tony Dungy Maria Taylor Jac Collinsworth Chris Simms Edit by Liam McGuire
By Drew Lerner on

Week 1 of the NFL season is in the books for NBC, and the scheduling gods looked favorably upon the network over the weekend.

NBC aired arguably the two most exciting games of opening week: a salivating Thursday night matchup between the Dallas Cowboys and defending champion Philadelphia Eagles, and a potential AFC Championship preview between the Baltimore Ravens and Buffalo Bills. Given how both games turned out, the first a drama-filled battle between division foes that featured an ejection before the first play from scrimmage, and the second an unbelievable fourth-quarter comeback led by the reigning NFL MVP, NBC has to be thrilled with how its season started.

So far, the viewership supports that. Thursday’s season opener drew 28.3 million viewers, a figure that ranks second-best of all time for NFL Kickoff games (although numerous Nielsen-related caveats mar historical comparisons). That audience would’ve likely been even bigger if it weren’t for an hour-long weather delay in the second half, pushing the game’s finish into the late hours on the East Coast.

Ironically, it’s that weather delay that exposed the weakest aspect of NBC’s NFL broadcasts: its studio team.

Let’s set the stage here a bit. NBC is a top-class NFL broadcaster. In my opinion, they have the best broadcast from start to finish in the business. Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth are one of the best booths in all of football. Tirico is a pro’s pro who is as tidy as they come, always well-prepared, rarely fumbles over words, and quickly identifies what is happening on the field. Collinsworth, for all his quirks, explains football in a way that normal people can understand, and can always isolate one or two aspects of a play that made it work or fail.

NBC’s production is also top-notch; think of how quickly the truck found a close-up shot of Jalen Carter’s loogie onto Dak Prescott on Thursday. Mind you, this was during a lull in play as trainers tended to an injured Eagles player; there wasn’t necessarily any reason to have a tight camera shot fixed on Carter and Prescott, but NBC had it anyway. (Not to mention they identified another angle later in the broadcast showing Prescott’s initial spit!)

This is all to say, when you tune into an NBC telecast of an NFL game, you’re getting the highest level of broadcast quality in all of live sports. But that quickly changes outside the 60 minutes of in-game action. NBC’s pregame, postgame, and halftime studio shows leave a lot to be desired. And with the network gearing up to broadcast the Super Bowl this season, an event with seemingly endless hours of shoulder programming, NBC’s studio shortcomings will become all the more glaring.

We got a sneak peek of that on Thursday night when the Football Night in America team had to fill an hour of programming during the aforementioned weather delay.

For as long as FNIA has existed, it has ranked as America’s most-watched sports studio show every year. And there’s no doubt the show will receive that superlative for the 20th consecutive season this year as well. Last year, FNIA averaged 7.1 million viewers per episode, multiple millions more than Fox and CBS earn for their respective pregame shows. But looking at the casts, FNIA has by far the least star power.

NBC’s in-studio team consists of host Maria Taylor and analysts Jason Garrett, Devin McCourty, Chris Simms, and Mike Florio. Fantasy expert Matthew Berry and NBC News data junky Steve Kornacki contribute in spots. On-site, NBC sends the trio of Jac Collinsworth, Tony Dungy, and Rodney Harrison.

These are not names or personalities that jump off the screen. You can make a compelling argument that Maria Taylor, the host, is the most prominent television star among the 10 on-air personalities regularly appearing on FNIA. That’s a problem when you’re being compared to the likes of Terry Bradshaw, Michael Strahan, and Rob Gronkowski on Fox, Bill Cowher, Nate Burleson, and Matt Ryan on CBS, Jason Kelce and Ryan Clark on ESPN, and even Richard Sherman and Ryan Fitzpatrick on Prime Video.

With all due respect to the playing careers of McCourty, Simms, and Harrison (which, for two of them, were very successful), and the coaching careers of Garrett and Dungy (a success for one), these are not the types of analysts that wow a viewer. Even compared to FNIA alumni like Jerome Bettis and Tiki Barber, or the legendary columnist Peter King, the current panel is a step down in terms of star power.

And when you’re relying on Chris Simms and Jason Garrett to hold court for an hour during a delay, the broadcast can get pretty dry pretty quickly.

Garrett, who has improved his TV presence since his debut on NBC in 2022, still lacks the charisma necessary to be a true value-add in a studio environment. There’s a trope that Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones only hires head coaches with personalities equivalent to a piece of drywall, and, well, drywall wouldn’t rate very well on TV.

Simms, of course, is talented in his own right, holding down successful podcasts under the NBC Sports umbrella, but still lives in the shadow of his father, Phil Simms, a two-time Super Bowl winner and a former lead NFL analyst for CBS. That’s not an issue exclusive to Simms on the NBC studio team, as Jac Collinsworth takes the nepotism gold medal for the network. His goofy and awkward on-field segments with Dungy and Harrison rarely offer more than surface-level analysis, and make the show feel disjointed.

See, the format of FNIA already puts the on-air talent behind the eight-ball. NBC is, in practice, running two separate pregame shows: one inside its studio in Stamford, Connecticut, and another on-site wherever Sunday Night Football is. Some segments show Taylor, Simms, Garrett, and McCourty from Connecticut, while others show Jac Collinsworth, Dungy, and Harrison on the field. Why? It’s not really clear. But it gives the viewer whiplash.

Good studio programming really comes down to chemistry, which can be challenging to build when you cram two shows into one.

Most of NBC’s studio talent is individually skilled at TV. Simms, Garrett, Dungy, Florio, McCourty, and Harrison are all perfectly suitable analysts. There’s nothing inherently wrong with them. But as a whole, FNIA feels like a show built entirely of role players. There’s no one that fans are excited to hear from. No one that fans are excited to disagree with. No one that has the superstar pedigree that every other pregame show has. It’s just wallpaper as we wait for Carrie Underwood.

That’s usually fine. There are only 15 to 30 minutes between when the late afternoon game ends and the Sunday Night Football theme song begins. However, when NBC’s studio crew has to fill time, as it did last Thursday, or when it will have to hold court for an entire Super Bowl Sunday this upcoming February, it becomes an issue.

In the absence of a superstar, NBC is trying to compensate with more people, as if throwing ten different personalities on screen throughout a 45-minute pregame will hide the fact that none of them can carry a show on their own

One true star and a format change would work wonders for NBC. Consolidate the entire show on-site. Have Maria Taylor host alongside three to four analysts. Sprinkle in Matthew Berry and Mike Florio for a couple of segments. Bing bang boom. Done. It’s a proven format that works for every other network. However, for whatever reason, NBC continues its bizarre split-studio format, which lacks rhythm and has no one to look forward to.

For a network that excels in every other aspect of NFL broadcasting, it’s time to give the studio show a bit of TLC.

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.

View all posts by Drew Lerner