Dr. Z's (Ninth annual) NFL TV Commentator Rankings

Buck is solid at baseball but way way way out of his element in football. I don't think he understands the concept of defense.

 

Z might be nitpicking about identifying blockers on kick returns, but the overwhelming majority of these play-by-play guys refuse even to acknowledge important substitutions due to injury or situation. They are completely uninterested in describing live action besides whatever is happening to whoever has the ball. I get the sense that most of them call the games by watching the monitor showing the TV broadcast instead of turning their neck slighting and calling the action right in front of them where they can see the whole field.

 

A thousand thank yous.

 

To me, the biggest EPSN transgression wasn't so much the announcing team (which was indeed brutal) as it was the gratuitous, utterly nonsensical "movie/rock-star-in-the-booth guest" appearances that Dr. Z alluded to. Who gives a fuck what Christian Slater/Keith Urban has to say about a sport he's clearly never even watched before?

 

I was surprised that Ron Pitts got any stars. I watched the NE-Detroit game this year and Pitts and his color man at the time, J.C. Pearson were calling out Detroit for playing their backup QB, McCown, at WR and not Mike Williams, even though it was reported two weeks earlier that Williams had been demoted to fifth WR because he didn't want to practice and McCown had been moved into the No. 3 and 4 slot. You'd think that in all the pregame preperation, the announcers would notice a depth chart and ask what was up with that.
Also surprised there was no mention of Joe Buck's cleat mistake.