Amazon is in a “holding pattern” as it awaits whether Al Michaels will join Thursday Night Football

After phoning his 11th Super Bowl on Sunday, Michaels’ future looks good as his NBC contract is about to expire. Meanwhile, there’s speculation he could be paired at Amazon with Fox’s Troy Aikman. “This deal with Michaels has been at the 1-yard line for a long time, and Amazon has been waiting to see if a final deal is pushed over the line,” said Andrew Marchand of the New York Post. The New York Post said. that Marshawn Lynch and Tony Gonzalez will be part of Thursday Night Football Pregame program.

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• Al Michaels’ career is proof that the best broadcasters are two different peopleOn the one hand, Michaels is a broadcaster like a machine. “But Michaels worked really hard to tell us that he Not a machine, which he knows about the wisps and undersides as well as the strange magic of Malcolm Butler. In other words, Michaels has the skills of a television professional but not his withered soul. That’s the same message Joe Buck spent 15 years trying to get across. “As Curtis pointed out,” Michaels was 41 years old when he first called Monday Night Football game. He announced several World Series and Miracles on Ice for ABC. But for a ’70s institution, he was seen as a fresh face. In 1985, Monday Night Football Frank Gifford calls his 15th year of competition, with Joe Namath and OJ Simpson handling the analysis. Or try. ABC was so frustrated with Simpson that they replaced him on the Super Bowl with Joe Theismann, an aggressive player. The following year, Roone Arledge, the supposed lifelong emperor of ABC Sports, was moved in a change of ownership. His replacement, Dennis Swanson, assigned Michaels to play game by game. Gifford has been demoted to analyst… Monday Night Football is a show built for the cultural moment when the ’80s were turning into the ’90s.”