Week two of the NFL season is often one of the most fascinating of the year. The surprisingly 0-1 teams (see: Cincinnati) are desperate to avoid an 0-2 start (still see: Cincinnati). The surprisingly 1-0 teams (see: Tampa Bay) are trying to beat the odds and move to 2-0. In 2023, week two also brought a new wrinkle; the Monday Night Football double header.
This was a unique approach for Disney, who has brought us the same Monday game on both ESPN and ABC but not two games at once. I’m interested in the strategy behind this and, by the time you read this, you may well have seen the Nielsen ratings saying that it was a genius strategy.
I get that, though you are splitting an audience, you are getting the entirety of the audience on one of your two networks. Thanks to the writer’s strike, you’ll be seeing much more of Monday Night Football on ABC. The network added 10 games to their upcoming schedule, you couldn’t write the NFL scripts anyway.
One other benefit of the Monday Night Football doubleheader is the return of ESPN’s Louis Riddick and Dan Orlovsky to the booth. Riddick was part of the ESPN booth that got shuffled out when Joe Buck and Troy Aikman came on the scene. He now spends his football weekends on the road with Mark Jones doing college games. Orlovsky is a studio stalwart of ESPN’s NFL coverage. He had been in the booth for college football games last season but now spends his Saturdays in the studio for ABC.
It is that college football exposure that I think makes Orlovsky and Riddick valuable additions to any NFL game telecast. For some reason, announcers tend to get pigeonholed as either a “college guy” or an “NFL guy”. I find the crossover refreshing.
ESPN has a deep roster of analysts, guys who have actually played the game. It is wise of them to use their expertise across the board. That said, I can also appreciate the difficulty of finding enough time to watch all the college and NFL games necessary to have a good working knowledge of everything involved at both levels. This is a battle I am sure Kirk Herbstreit has had to learn how to fight in recent years.
I think having the guys with college game experience also doing NFL games brings a different dimension to the broadcast. It allows an insight you don’t always get when new players show up in the pros. Guys like Orlovsky and Riddick know their strengths and weaknesses already. They can tell the story of what a player has had to overcome to be where he is as a professional player. They have broken down hours of film that player appears in well before he is even drafted by an NFL team.
This is especially true when it comes to quarterback play. For instance, one of Monday night’s games involved rookie quarterback Bryce Young. Young is not alone in being a professional quarterback that tore it up on the collegiate level. He became first quarterback in Alabama’s storied football history to win the Heisman Trophy, other than his size, every other box was checked in terms of him being an NFL star. But that guy is in almost every draft. They may not be as physically talented as Young, few are, but they look like a can’t miss NFL prospects.
A guy like Orlovsky or Riddick watched in real time as these guys performed when the lights were on. In some cases, they have been in meetings with the college head coaches to hear them give an honest assessment about a player’s physical and mental tools. This is invaluable information for a game telecast, much more than: “That’s Bijan Robinson who was a very productive running back at Texas”.
Both Riddick and Orlovsky are very good football minds, Herbstreit is too, their deep roots in the college game not only make them better but quite unique on the NFL broadcasts.
We get Herbstreit every Thursday night on Amazon Prime. Here’s hoping we get more of Riddick and Orlovsky together. I think their insight is refreshing and who doesn’t love a Monday night double header?
Ryan Brown is a columnist for Barrett Sports Media, and a co-host of the popular sports audio/video show ‘The Next Round’ formerly known as JOX Roundtable, which previously aired on WJOX in Birmingham. You can find him on Twitter @RyanBrownLive and follow his show @NextRoundLive.
