Rich Eisen built a second career on NFL Network almost by accident, stepping into the play-by-play chair years after he\u2019d already made his name as a host. It appears that part of his career is now over, as he told Sports Illustrated\u2019s Jimmy Traina that he no longer expects to call games.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo, it is not,\u201d Eisen said when Traina asked if calling extra games for NFL Network was still part of his r\u00e9sum\u00e9. \u201cI believe I am done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eisen started calling NFL Network\u2019s international slate in 2018, gradually building a rapport with analyst Kurt Warner<\/a> as the network leaned on the duo year after year for its overseas package. Eisen has talked before about the specific pressure of the job, telling Richard Deitsch<\/a> \u2014 then with The Athletic \u2013 that he stayed conscious of critics who thought he \u201cshould just stick to hosting,\u201d even as he pushed to get better at it. That criticism never fully let up<\/a>, as The Athletic\u2019s Andrew Marchand previously said that Eisen \u201cis just not a play-by-player\u201d and argued he called games \u201cthe way he thinks you\u2019re supposed to call a game instead of being instinctive, which comes from reps and reps.\u201d<\/p>\n Eisen\u2019s exit from the booth comes as ESPN has taken over production decisions for NFL Network following its acquisition of NFL Media earlier this year, a deal that\u00a0also killed off <\/a>the infamous Monday Night Football doubleheader. NFL broadcast planner Mike North<\/a> later admitted the doubleheader format \u201cprobably wasn\u2019t a good use of an NFL asset<\/a>,\u201d and the four games ESPN handed back to the league as part of the deal ended up scattered across Fox, NBC, and Netflix rather than staying on ESPN\u2019s own air. Eisen\u2019s international package fell under that same reshuffling, and reporting earlier this year<\/a> had already suggested he wouldn\u2019t keep the job once ESPN took over. Dave Pasch signed an extension with ESPN<\/a> this summer that put him in line for that same international slate, leaving his longtime radio role with the Arizona Cardinals to take it.<\/p>\n In his conversation with Traina on the latest episode of the SI Media with Jimmy Traina podcast, Eisen described play-by-play as fundamentally at odds with the instincts that have defined the rest of his career.<\/p>\n \u201cI enjoyed doing it a lot, man. I enjoyed doing it a lot. But it\u2019s so counter to what I normally do,\u201d Eisen said. \u201cSitting in this chair on this set, three-hour radio TV simulcast game day morning on Sunday morning, if there\u2019s dead air, if there\u2019s blank space, if there\u2019s no talking, my first thought is to jump in and fill the void. It\u2019s the exact opposite when you\u2019re calling a game. Your job is to shut the f up after the big moment happens.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p>\n He also pointed to a learning curve that took years to work through, tied to a decision he made early on not to call games off a broadcast monitor at the stadium.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be as good as you want to be at that, you\u2019ve got to do it a lot,\u201d Eisen said. \u201cWhen I first started doing it for NFL Network, it was like, I don\u2019t want to be one of those announcers who calls the game off a monitor, so I want to look at the field. But looking at it, it was like seeing it through a straw. By last year, I was seeing the whole field.\u201d<\/p>\n But just as Eisen was starting to see the whole field, his play-by-play opportunities dried up on both fronts. YouTube, where he and Warner called an exclusive game last season<\/a>, won\u2019t have any NFL games this year after walking away from<\/a> a five-game package when the league moved to split games <\/a>between the Google-owned online video-sharing platform and Netflix. And while he\u2019s no longer in line for NFL Network\u2019s international slate, he\u2019ll continue to host NFL GameDay Morning on Sunday mornings.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rich Eisen built a second career on NFL Network almost by accident, stepping into the play-by-play chair years…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":775170,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[559],"tags":[64,63,29553,593,2361,30973,367821,85],"class_list":["post-775169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-kurt-warner","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-network","tag-rich-eisen","tag-si-media-with-jimmy-traina","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775169","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=775169"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/775169\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/775170"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=775169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=775169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=775169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}