NFL Wild Card Weekend -- With an elegant Jag on

Considering how bad many (myself included) expected Seattle to be this year, I'd say they are ahead of schedule. Plus they'll get some good draft slots thanks to the Broncos.

 

I get all of that. No question.

But if you're doing play-by-play on an NFL football game in the midst of a remarkable second-half comeback and you can't even feign excitement or interest, it's time to step aside. I don't care if you have Carrot Top next to you in the booth.

The Jags won that game on a last second field goal that went inside the bar by maybe six inches... and Al's call of the final play was "OK, here we go..." as the ball was already passing through and hitting the net. The Jags celebrated and Al and Tony were muttering that the defensive penalty was "unbelievable," not even acknowledging the win.

 

Like most I wasn't all that impressed with Dungy tonight, but why did NBC have him work as a game analyst when he rarely does it? I find that he can be insightful breaking down plays in the studio, but working in a booth at a game is a different skillset that he doesn't have. There had to have been a better option available somehow.

 

We differ on how "wrongly" he was treated... but I will say this: if I'm the NBC exec who made that move, this game tells me I absolutely made the right call. Because Mike Tirico would have been 100 times better on this game, and I'm not even a Tirico guy.

Like I said above, I totally get Ex's comments about the difficulty of doing your best work with a mediocre on-air partner. But the flip side of that is, I have absolutely no use for the fabulously paid talent who concludes that a gig is beneath him and phones it while the rest of the crew works their asses off. He was better during the regular season than he was tonight, but I felt like Herbstreit was saving those broadcasts most of the year.

 

I wondered the same thing. The NBC first team is doing Ravens-Bengals tomorrow, but there had to be someone better than Dungy for this.