On Thursday night, the 2023 National Football League season officially kicked off from GEHA Field at Arrowhead Stadium and ended in a surprising upset. Just hours after the Kansas City Chiefs raised their 2022 Super Bowl championship banner, they were defeated by the Detroit Lions 21-20, energizing a fan base and helping the team in its quest to snap a six-year playoff drought. Detroit has a burgeoning young core that fueled the team in winning eight of its final 10 games during the 2022 campaign and looks to build off of that momentum this year. After the contest, however, NBC Sports lead play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico conveyed that the seminal victory had an asterisk next to it for several reasons.
Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce was ruled out before game time nursing a hyperextended knee, leaving quarterback Patrick Mahomes without one of his strongest offensive options. Moreover, defensive tackle Chris Jones watched the game from a suite because of a contract holdout, pressuring the Chiefs to give him a long-term extension. Because of these two key absences, Tirico asserted that the Lions’ win needs to be qualified and perturbed Detroit football fans who had been waiting several years for a triumph of this magnitude. After the statement was made, however, Tirico highlighted how the Lions have turned a corner, and color commentator Cris Collinsworth emphasized that the team received a “thumbs up” for the win.
“I’m not a Collinsworth fan,” show co-host Jon Jansen said Friday morning on 97.1 The Ticket, which was broadcasting live from Las Vegas, Nev. “You only get a thumbs up or a thumbs down – you either get a win or a loss – and at the end of the year, when they add them all up; there’s going to be 17 that they add up, and it’ll tell you [that] you have 11 in the thumbs up and six in the thumbs down.”
As it pertains to Tirico specifically, people are upset with his comments and issuing threats to him and his family on social media. Everyone on the show believes that he did not have an acrimonious intent with his discourse, especially having welcomed him on the air to talk about the team on Thursday.
“He has defended this city and all it sports teams nationally more than anybody else I can think of on a national level,” co-host Mike Stone said.
Stone believes that Tirico trying to expand on the statement by recognizing the stellar play of the Lions could have made people think that he sought to disparage the team. At the same time, the program recognizes that everyone can be overly sensitive to statements about Detroit sports teams which is exhibited as a byproduct of passion and commitment.
Board operator Tom Watson was involved in the discussion from the show’s Southfield, Mich. studios and holds a similar sentiment to Stone and Jansen because of his previous defense of the teams. Tirico has had a long career in the business and consistently exudes professionalism and preparedness, rendering him one of the most well-respected play-by-play announcers in the NFL.
“We like him and we know his credentials,” Watson said, “and there is no one… in sports media as sharp and clean and good as him. But guess what? People say things sometimes, and he probably didn’t mean to say it that way and I don’t think he believes that in his heart, but he said it and we let things breathe in sports radio. This is not an opinion; this isn’t hearsay. It’s fact that he said it.”
