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Al Michaels has been at the center of plenty of criticism over the past few years from NFL fans who don’t think he brings enough energy into the Thursday Night Football booth, but it doesn’t sound like he has any plans to reevaluate his approach.
By this point, Al Michaels has absolutely nothing left to prove. The 79-year-old sports broadcasting legend has been doing his thing for more than 50 years and has routinely covered some of the biggest events in sports, including multiple Super Bowls, World Series, NBA and Stanely Cup Finals, and the Olympics (the most famous call of his career is probably “The Miracle on Ice”).
In 2022, Amazon tapped Michaels to team up with Kirk Herbstreit after acquiring the rights to Thursday Night Football, and while the duo has been repeatedly cursed with the task of attempting to drum up excitement during some truly dreadful games between terrible teams, Michaels has caught plenty of heat for the air of apathy and disinterest that tends to permeate calls during moments that seemed to deserve a bit more enthusiasm.
Michaels is far from the first NFL broadcaster to catch heat over their fairly subdued approach to calling games (Joe Buck was one of the worst culprits back in the day before making a conscientious effort to improve, and it appears the play-by-play veteran thinks the issue is fairly overblown.
During Thursday’s installment of The Pat McAfee Show, Michaels got the chance to address his critics while firmly brushing them off and asserting his style is the same as it’s always been.
“I don’t scream the game at you and I don’t holler the game at you.. I never have
You have to save it for the moments and I’m telling the story of the game” ~ Al Michaels #PMSLive https://t.co/5fAcOwWKNu pic.twitter.com/1s4o3bPsre
— Pat McAfee (@PatMcAfeeShow) October 3, 2024
Here’s what he had to say:
“I don’t scream the game at you. I don’t holler the game at you. Never have.
People go back and they say, ‘Pat Summerall was one of the greatest of all time’—and he was—remember how Pat did the game? He didn’t blow you out. You have to save it for the moments…
You’ve got to save some room. CeeDee Lamb scores a touchdown [in the first quarter]. What am I supposed to do? Scream my guts out? It’s a 60-minute game. You scream your guts out in the first three minutes, where are you going for the next 57?”
Fair enough.