Al Michaels Gets Candid About Lackluster ‘Thursday Night Football’ Games After First Season With Amazon

"Thursday Night Football" broadcaster Al Michaels

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In 2021, Amazon took yet another step toward its quest for global domination when it inked a deal with the NFL to obtain the exclusive rights to Thursday Night Football. It made yet another splash in 2022 when it secured the talents of broadcasting legend Al Michaels, but it’s safe to say its inaugural season left plenty to be desired.

Over the course of the campaign, football fans repeatedly encountered a number of technical problems while trying to stream TNF games that were initially plagued by video quality issues. While the company was eventually able to work out most of the kinks, there was only so much it could do to influence the quality of the product on the field, as the weeknight showdowns routinely featured some phenomenally mediocre contests between fairly hapless teams.

While Michaels did what he was paid to do, he was also not shy about sharing his disdain during some of the more particularly painful games he was subjected to while working alongside Kirk Herbstreit (who revealed his partner in the booth had at least one thing to look forward to each week thanks to the fairly lavish meal he consumes during halftime). 

Michaels has basically reached a point in life where he doesn’t really need to go out of his way to please anyone—and he proved that’s the case during a recent interview with Richar Deitsch of The Athletic where he shared some incredibly candid thoughts on his newest gig.

During the conversation, Michaels acknowledged he didn’t do much to filter his feelings over the course of the season but noted it wasn’t a dramatically different approach than the one he’s harnessed in the past:

“A lot of people said, ‘Al’s bored, Al’s pissed off that he’s doing this.’ Not the case. Monday nights, Sunday night, I did things like this. Maybe not to that degree, but I try to echo the feelings of what the fan feels because I’m a fan.”

He also gave credit to the powers that be at Amazon (who were forced to issue refunds to advertisers after failing to meet the viewing numbers they promised) for letting him do his thing, as he had this to see when discussing the above clip from the “dreadful” matchup between the Colts and the Broncos in Week 4:

“I think they understood what this was. We’re making the most of it. I mean, you just can’t oversell something. Do you want me to sell you a 20-year-old Mazda? That’s what you’re asking me to do. I can’t sell you a used car…

I’ve kind of gone down that road a little bit in games that have been bad in the past. But this game was horrifically bad. What were you supposed to do at that point? And away I went.”

There’s no telling how long Michaels will be sticking around, but conversations like this show why he’ll be missed when he finally decides to hang up the headset.

Connor Toole avatar and headshot for BroBible
Connor Toole is the Deputy Editor at BroBible. He is a New England native who went to Boston College and currently resides in Brooklyn, NY. Frequently described as "freakishly tall," he once used his 6'10" frame to sneak in the NBA Draft and convince people he was a member of the Utah Jazz.