Andrew Whitworth went from being a Super Bowl winning offensive tackle for the Los Angeles Rams in 2021 to being a part of the media in 2022 as one of the pregame analysts for Thursday Night Football on Amazon Prime Video. What was unique about the Amazon TNF experience this past season was the pregame and postgame shows were live at the stadium, which can have the potential to present some challenges.
Whitworth was a guest on The Rich Eisen Show on Tuesday and he said there were times on set where he could not hear a question that he was going to be asked.
“Being live in-person…you are going into the stadium, you are sitting there, the fans start roaring, the lights are going out, and you are trying to make a point. Just things you don’t think about while you are watching but when you are doing it, all of a sudden the lights drop, the energy goes up, you can’t hear anything. You think you hear questions sometimes you hope, but you try to decipher it.”
Whitworth did mention that once they would go off-air, he would question if he got things right that he said on-air and while he has a vast amount of knowledge about the NFL from his playing experience, he wanted to make sure he used the right words in his analysis.
“You realize you’ve got to be on your stuff and really confident in who you are and what you have to say. You get done sometimes and you are like did I say the right names and the right things? I know I know what I am talking about, but did I say it correctly? You have to go back and watch it and go good, I did. You second guess yourself when you are in those moments live like that.”
When Eisen asked Whitworth what he was most surprised about in his first year in the media, Whitworth said that he enjoyed the relationships he got to make with the people behind-the-scenes and how valuable they are to the process of putting a great production together.
“I think just the behind-the-scenes. Everything that goes into it. Getting to see the production trucks and all the people that are involved. A lot of times I think when you are watching, you forget how many people there are behind-the-scenes that are doing great work. Getting to meet all of them and I guess you thought you would be on-air by yourself but there is this huge team that is all involved in that process.
“Those relationships and being on the road, that traveling circus type, everybody showing up on Wednesday getting after it for the game. I thought it was really cool. More camaraderie than I ever would have imagined.”
