Al Michaels Removed From NFL Playoff Coverage on NBC

Al Michaels will not call NFL games for NBC when the playoffs begin in January. According to The New York Post, the 79-year-old broadcaster has been removed from covering playoff games for the network this year. NBC has three playoff games, with one streaming exclusively on Peacock. Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth will call two games, while Noah Eagle and Todd Blackledge will call the third.

Michaels currently calls Thursday Night Football games on Prime Video with Kirk Herbstreit. Last year, Michaels worked the playoffs for NBC but was criticized for a perceived lack of enthusiasm on the call with Tony Dungy during the Jacksonville Jaguars vs. Los Angeles Chargers playoff game. 

In November, Michaels spoke to the New York Post and said he was calling a game for NBC. And when asked about it being in limbo, Michales said, “It’s in my deal. Where are you hearing that from? That’s part of my deal. Are you hearing something that I’m not hearing?”

Michaels is arguably the best NFL TV play-by-play announcer of all time. In his career, Michaels worked for NBC Sports (1971-74, 2006-present), CBS Sports (1975) and ABC Sports (1976-2006). He’s won the Sports Emmy award for Outstanding Sports Personality, Play-by-Play five times and has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 

Earlier this year, Michaels spoke to The Athletic about his first year calling games at Prime Video. “It probably, in a way, exceeded my expectations,” he said. “I thought (the production) would look good, but I didn’t think it would necessarily be that good. For that, I credit (executive producer) Fred Gaudelli and a lot of the people that he brought over. If you go back a year or so, Amazon didn’t have any infrastructure. … I knew once they got Fred involved in this thing, it was going to look big. Obviously, they didn’t want any kind of a rinky-dink, second-rate production. Amazon was totally into this thing completely. … I think they were very happy with the way it turned out because frankly, and it’s not a brag either, I’d put our production of the way it looked up against any network production this year.”