Ahead of an offseason in which a number of high-profile names could be on the market, Amazon Prime Video is locking up its “Thursday Night Football” analyst Kirk Herbstreit for at least the time being.
Amazon has signed “TNF” analyst Herbstreit to a contract extension, Andrew Marchand of The Athletic reported Wednesday. Terms of the deal were not reported, save for the fact that the length is shorter than Herbstreit’s current five-year contract.
News of the extension comes as the NFL TV analyst hot stove is beginning to warm up. ESPN NFL analyst Troy Aikman is in the final year of his contract and said in a recent podcast interview with Richard Deitsch that he would have expected a new deal by now. Fox NFL analyst Greg Olsen, who called a Super Bowl for the network and was then demoted in favor of Tom Brady, is also reportedly in the final year of his deal. CBS lead analyst Tony Romo is currently on leave after an arrest for OWI and will not be back on the air until Week 5 at the earliest, if at all.
Given the potential for upheaval, one might not have expected Prime to lock itself into an extension with Herbstreit, who by all accounts was not the streamer’s first choice when it hired him in 2022. Prime had primarily been linked to Aikman and Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay during that offseason. According to Marchand, Herbstreit’s new deal provides Prime an out in the event that it can sign “one of its top targets,” with McVay mentioned specifically. It is unclear who else might qualify as a “top target,” or by what means Prime could exit its contract.
Herbstreit is also in the final year of his deal as a college football analyst for ESPN. His association with the NFL began as part of his ESPN role, when he and his college partner Chris Fowler began calling games as the secondary broadcast team for “Monday Night Football.” During the 2020 COVID upheaval, there was some discussion about he and Fowler shifting to “MNF” if the college football season was canceled.
