Report: NBC passes on Michaels for playoff gig

• ESPN News Services

Dec 12, 2023, 02:31 PM ET

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NBC plans to use Noah Eagle, 26, as the play-by-play voice for its No. 2 NFL playoff broadcast crew in January, passing on venerable voice Al Michaels, the New York Post reported Tuesday.

NBC “Sunday Night Football” tandem Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth have the call on three of the network’s four playoff broadcasts next month, including one game on Peacock, but NBC declined to bring back Michaels for the fourth game. Instead, the college football broadcast team of Eagle and Todd Blackledge with sideline reporter Kathryn Tappen drew the assignment.

The Post reported that NBC Sports vice president Greg Hughes confirmed the assignments to the newspaper.

Michaels, 79, reportedly earns $1 million per game in an agreement with Amazon that affords him the opportunity to accept assignments from NBC in his “emeritus” label granted when he left at the end of his last contract in 2022.

Michaels and Tony Dungy called the AFC wild-card game in Jacksonville last season, when the Jaguars rallied from a 27-point deficit to defeat the Los Angeles Chargers.

Eagle is the son of Ian Eagle, an established play-by-play announcer for CBS, TBS and TNT, working college basketball, NBA and NFL games. Noah Eagle replaced Ian Eagle on YES Network NBA broadcasts this season.

Noah Eagle, Blackledge and Tappen are also assigned to the NBC regular-season broadcast of Steelers-Bengals on Dec. 23 and the Nickelodeon kid-focused broadcast of Super Bowl LVIII on Feb. 11.

Michaels has been the voice of prime-time NFL coverage since 1986, first on “Monday Night Football” until he took the “Sunday Night Football” job alongside John Madden in 2006. He worked in the SNF role until the end of the 2021 season.

He currently calls Thursday night games streamed on Amazon Prime Video with analyst Kirk Herbstreit.

Field Level Media contributed to this report.

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