New Amazon Thursday Night Football play-by-play announcer Al Michaels joined the SI Media Podcast with Jimmy Traina this week to discuss the upcoming NFL season, and the legendary announcer said he was slightly surprised by the chemistry he has with new analyst Kirk Herbstreit.
“By the end of the first quarter, I said, ‘This is really working extremely well,’ and then we did 3 1/2 quarters that night,” Michaels said of of the pair’s first rehearsal together. “We didn’t take the game to its conclusion because we said, ‘Hey, this is gonna work.’ We went down to Houston to do a real game—a preseason game, anyway—that went out on the air, and it felt very very comfortable.”
Michaels said he and Herbstreit didn’t have a relationship until earlier this year but things came naturally between the pair.
“With Kirk, I didn’t really know him until April,” Michaels said. “And then we had a couple of days in New York together and a couple of other meals and meetings and phone calls, and I knew his rhythm and he knew mine. I don’t want to say I was shocked by it, but I was very pleasantly surprised and walked away from the booth that night saying, ‘You know, for a preseason game where you’re not talking about any strategy and it’s the Wild West in a way, and we’re going to the sideline reporter, Kaylee Hartung, a lot, it’s not like a regular-season game. But I feel really comfortable going into that Chargers-Chiefs game next week.”
Michaels made the move to Amazon after more than a decade announcing Sunday Night Football for NBC. Michaels claims the network never offered him a contract to stay.
