With Jim Nantz and Phil Simms working every Thursday night game this year televised on CBS and/or NFL Network, they won’t be working every Sunday on CBS.
This means that, for any Sundays when Nantz and Simms are otherwise getting ready for the next Thursday’s game, Ian Eagle and Dan Fouts (pictured, but not really) become the No. 1 team at CBS.
It’s unclear when and how often Nantz and Simms will skip a Sunday. Conventional wisdom suggests that Nantz and Simms will work the late afternoon CBS doubleheader games, and that they’ll be off on the Sundays when CBS has only regional coverage.
This isn’t Fouts’ first stint at the top of a ticket. He served as an analyst on ABC’s Monday Night Football with Al Michaels and Dennis Miller.
The other CBS broadcasting crews for 2014 will be Greg Gumbel and Trent Green, Kevin Harlan and Rich Gannon, Spero Dedes and Solomon Wilcots, and Andrew Catalon, Steve Beuerlein, and Steve Tasker.
There’s a theory/hypothesis/whatever that CBS agreed to give up Nantz and Simms for Thursday night games because the network wants to begin the process of phasing them out. While we don’t know the reality of that perception, it’ll be interesting to see how much longer Nantz and Simms continue to be the top duo at CBS.