Al Michaels has gone from complaining about the product the NFL provided to Amazon for “Thursday Night Football” two years ago to raving about this season’s schedule.
The “TNF” package on Amazon’s Prime Video streaming service kicks off Thursday when the Dolphins host the Bills in a matchup between two AFC East rivals who both have plausible Super Bowl aspirations.
In a recent conversation with the Washington Post, Michaels, who co-hosts “TNF” with Kirk Herbstreit, theorized that the NFL has improved the quality of its schedule this year as the league continues to expand with streaming.
“At the beginning of the first year, I wasn’t so much unhappy with the actual schedule, but with the outcome of the games. We had the Indianapolis-Denver game and the Washington-Chicago game and those were not games that NFL Films will ever remember,” Michaels said.
“Last year was significantly better, and this year is even better – by far the best of all, and I think that has a lot to do with where the business is right now. Streaming is becoming more and more important.”
Last season, Michaels said, the NFL let NBC’s Peacock broadcast the Dolphins-Chiefs matchup as an exclusive, streaming-only playoff game. Given the star-studded lineup that included Patrick Mahomes, Travis Kelce, Tua Tagovailoa and Tyreek Hill, it was arguably the highlight of the weekend.
This season, in addition to the Black Friday game (which takes place on November 29th between the Raiders and the Chiefs), Amazon will also play its first playoff game in the wildcard round on January 11th or 12th.
Other regular season games on Prime Video include Cowboys-Giants, Texans-Jets, Packers-Lions, Bengals-Ravens and Rams-49ers.
Twelve of the 17 games are divisional duels, and even games that look like flops on paper, like Saints-Broncos, have storylines like Sean Payton’s return to New Orleans.
“The league now understands that the business is going in that direction,” Michaels said. “How quickly it will go there, I don’t know.”
He pointed out that Netflix’s Christmas doubleheader was another sign that the league was moving to broadcast games exclusively on streaming platforms.
“The curve is going up on streaming, and I don’t want to say it’s going down on linear streaming because the NFL is so powerful right now and linear streaming is still very, very important, but there’s a lot of betting on streaming right now,” Michaels said.
Michaels also believes that another factor in the strong schedule is that the NFL now trusts Amazon to produce the games at a high level.
Michaels revealed that two NBA owners called him and told him that Amazon’s game and studio production of “TNF” was a factor in their intention to move from TNT to Prime Video.
(He recognized that Amazon’s reported $1.8 billion annual bid was also important.)
Michaels’ contract with Amazon expires after this season and he spoke to the Washington Post about his future plans.
“The truth is, I’ve gotten into the habit of living in the present. I’ve been doing that for a long time. I don’t like going into the past. People like to hear stories about the old days – I get bored with it,” Michaels said.
“I don’t know what’s going to happen in the future. Nobody knows. Right now I feel great. I’m looking forward to the start of the season. What’s going to happen in the future, I haven’t decided yet. I suspect that at some point during the year I’ll have a better feel for what it’s like. But I feel like if I can perform to the standard that I expect of myself, then I want to continue. If not, then I’ll have to reconsider. I don’t want to go out, as Howard Cosell always said, ‘a shadow of my former self.'”
