Al Michaels’ Quirks Define Amazon’s NFL Broadcasts 

Among sports fans, certain voices carry with them an air of authority. From Vin Scully to Howard Cosell to Keith Jackson, just hearing these top-level broadcasters can create a mood harking back to their famous calls and transform a game into an event. For decades, first on CBS and then on Fox, if viewers heard the voices of Pat Summerall and John Madden, they knew they had found the week’s must-watch football game.

Summerall and Madden have both passed on, but Madden’s broadcast partner later in his career, Al Michaels, continues his play-by-play duties. Beginning in 2022, he moved from network television to Amazon Prime, where he and former college quarterback Kirk Herbstreit call Thursday Night Football games for the streaming service.

Having celebrated his 80th birthday on Nov. 12, broadcasting’s newest octogenarian has taken on a distinct personality in the latter stages of his career. If Madden was the sportscaster fans wanted to have a beer and talk football with, Michaels resembles the sometimes-crotchety, opinionated uncle who crashes Thanksgiving dinner.

Wry Detachment

Michaels’ personality comes through in distinct ways, both during and away from game action. For starters, he claims never knowingly to have eaten a vegetable. One wonders exactly how Michaels defines this boast — would French fries or other potato-based snacks count? Does ketchup count? — but at minimum, it appears not to have harmed his longevity.

While broadcasting football games in recent years, Michaels has often taken a tone of bemusement toward the game that his superiors pay him millions to describe. During Super Bowl LII, for instance, a reference to whether a player retained possession of the football after contact with the ground prompted Michaels to ask no one in particular: “Can any of us survive the ground?” Cris Collinsworth, Michaels’ then-partner in the booth, chuckled, given the many lengthy replay-related delays and changing definitions of what constitutes a catch in the modern NFL.

Michaels also uses archaic, and occasionally mixed, cultural references while making his snarky asides. Earlier this year, just after halftime of a game in which the New York Jets looked anemic on offense in the first half, he claimed there was “no truth to the rumor that the Jets played ‘Hello Darkness, My Old Friend’ at halftime — that’s fake news.” When, in the last game of the 2020 regular season, he inadvertently used the Washington football team’s former name, he then claimed he owed his producer “two bitcoins” for doing so. (At the time, a single bitcoin was worth roughly $30,000 — a fact of which Michaels was likely unaware.)

Significant to Some

Michaels often inserts gambling references in his broadcasts — but still feels the need to do so slyly, even though most states have legalized sports betting and the NFL and other professional leagues now advertise such services heavily. For instance, at the end of last week’s game pitting the Philadelphia Eagles and Washington Commanders against each other, Michaels and Herbstreit had this exchange:

With the Eagles having a seemingly insurmountable lead, Michaels pivoted to the gambling angle — albeit in a very coded manner. But because the game’s over/under for total points stood at 48.5, not even seven points from a Washington touchdown would change that element of the outcome, as Michaels alluded.

That element dispensed with, Michaels and Herbstreit then tried to provide a percentage likelihood that Washington could complete the steps necessary to come back late in the game. Referencing Amazon’s NextGen stats probabilities, Michaels noted, “I’m the Last Gen — what do you want me to tell you?”

Never was that observation more accurate than in a game two years ago, during his first season on Amazon. In a game at SoFi Stadium, Michaels mocked the stadium announcer’s incessant call-and-response with fans: “Whose House? Rams House!” admitting to Herbstreit, “I hate it.” 

Living Legend

Particularly during his time with Amazon, some fans have called for Michaels to retire, criticizing his seeming detachment from the game and claiming that he is essentially phoning it in. Michaels has attributed some of this detachment to the mediocre schedule of games the NFL assigned to Amazon: “Do you want me to sell you a 20-year-old Mazda? That’s what you’re asking me to do. I can’t sell you a used car.”

Having broadcast virtually every major sporting event — from calling the “Miracle on Ice” during the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics to announcing the finals of pro football, baseball, basketball, and hockey over the past four decades — Michaels feels little need to adjust or adapt to his critics. In the final year of his three-year contract with Amazon, he brought instant credibility to a streaming service airing major pro sporting events for the first time. What if anything Michaels does in broadcasting beyond the current NFL season is anyone’s guess — but if current trends hold, he will do it his way.