The triumvirate of Greg Olsen, Troy Aikman, and Kirk Herbstreit entered this NFL season in the final year of their respective contracts at Fox, ESPN, and Prime Video. While Prime Video reportedly extended Herbstreit (sort of), speculation around Aikman and Olsen’s futures is hitting midseason form.
“My best sources are predicting that Greg Olsen will wind up in ESPN’s Monday Night Football both next season,” John Ourand reported for Puck on Thursday night. “Olsen’s current contract with Fox ends this season, and while he has had some negotiations over a renewal, nothing is signed.”
Ourand continued, “Olsen, who lost the top analyst job to Tom Brady in 2024, has made it clear that he wants to be a number one analyst. And right now, it looks like ESPN’s seat will be open.”
Aikman and Joe Buck have been broadcast partners since 2002, first with Fox and now with ESPN, but only Buck’s future is secured beyond this season. ESPN signed Buck to a lucrative extension last month.
According to Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports, growing tensions came to a head before the duo called the Buffalo Bills’ win over the Los Angeles Rams on Monday Night Football this week.
“On Monday night, before the Rams took on the Bills at SoFi Stadium, the site of this season’s Super Bowl, Buck ‘broke the ice’ on this unspoken tension, and he and Aikman had an argument, a source said,” Glasspiegel wrote Wednesday. “It ultimately de-escalated, and the two had a broadcast in which viewers never would have been able to decipher that something was amiss.”
The fourth wall was permanently broken Thursday, however, when Aikman appeared on KTCK The Ticket in Dallas and didn’t exactly go out of his way to dispel Glasspiegel’s report. By Thursday night, Aikman doubled down on the possibility of departing ESPN.
“It just seems to be where they’re going — that they’re gonna go in a different direction because there’s been no talks, no contract negotiations,” Aikman told Jimmy Traina. “We’re in a Super Bowl year. The Super Bowl is Feb. 14. My contract ends in March. It just doesn’t seem logical that if they were gonna keep me, something wouldn’t be in place before that.”
ESPN may covet Olsen in this hypothetical post-Aikman world, but that’s only half of the equation.
“Spoke to Fox Sports management: They said early in the offseason they spoke with Greg Olsen’s representative where they laid out what the parameters of a new contract would be,” Richard Deitsch reported Thursday night, updating his earlier report. “So from the Fox Sports perspective, they say they’ve had some conversations about a contract.”
Deitsch additionally quoted Fox Sports president Brad Zager as saying, “We want Greg here for a long time. We are ready to pick up those conversations whenever they are ready.”
But that might only be relevant if there’s no No. 1 job available for Olsen to snatch up. As it stands now, ESPN could be the lead chair he’s been waiting for.