Just as reports circulated about Amazon showing interest in ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit for its Thursday Night Football analyst opening, news of the streaming platform meeting with another prospective broadcaster is making the rounds.
According to Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio, Amazon is meeting with former New Orleans Saints coach Sean Payton this week regarding the TNF gig. Perhaps this is the meeting that Amazon originally wanted with Sean McVay. Regardless, Florio reports this is the second time that Payton has met with Amazon executives, which would appear to indicate the sides are inching toward an agreement.
News of Payton meeting with Amazon comes just days after Fox reportedly entered negotiations with the coach. Does this mean that talks with Fox hit a wall? Or are Payton and his representatives doing their due diligence in exploring all possible options?
Previous reports indicated that Fox was more interested in Payton as a studio analyst, perhaps to eventually replace Jimmy Johnson for the coaching perspective on the Fox NFL Sunday studio crew. He could work on the Fox NFL Kickoff team before that or bounce between the two shows.
But with Troy Aikman reportedly leaving Fox’s No. 1 NFL broadcast team for ESPN and Monday Night Football, the network has an opening alongside Joe Buck and Payton would be a splashy name that attracts headlines (and, hopefully, viewers). And as Florio points out, Fox might not pay as much as Amazon but the over-the-air network has a greater reach and more established credibility with fans.
One concern with hiring Payton would be whether or not he intends to return to NFL coaching (notably the Dallas Cowboys) after taking a year off from the grind. Fox presumably would consider it less of an issue if they had to replace him on a studio crew after one season. But as the analyst on the No. 1 broadcast team, that seems more problematic in terms of developing on-screen chemistry and familiarity with viewers.
Putting play-by-play broadcaster Joe Buck in the position of working with two different analysts in consecutive seasons seems unfair to him. But maybe the subtext to such a move would be that this is an experiment.
There’s no guarantee Payton will be good as a broadcaster. And if he’s a flop, Fox could just move Greg Olsen up to that spot, which they could’ve done anyway. Any bad publicity from making changes so often might be offset by the big headlines attracted by putting a top NFL coach in the booth.
Of course, that’s making the presumption that Payton wants to return to coaching. Maybe he doesn’t, especially since the money in broadcasting is so much better for a far less demanding lifestyle.
Ian Casselberry is a sports media columnist for BSM. He has previously written and edited for Awful Announcing, The Comeback, Sports Illustrated, Yahoo Sports, MLive, Bleacher Report, and SB Nation. You can find him on Twitter @iancass or reach him by email at iancass@gmail.com.
