Netflix started a little slow on it sports coverage. There was the uncalled-for NFL Christmas Day in-game Zoom with Emmitt Smith last year. There was MLB Opening Night when comedian Bert Kreischer screamed at viewers about baseball before the New York Yankees and San Francisco Giants came to bat in March.<\/p>\n
There was a lot of Netflix-ization of the sports. It wasn\u2019t great.<\/p>\n
But Netflix has learned a thing or two as it has gone forward, which included, Thursday night, the Los Angeles Rams versus the San Francisco 49ers from Melbourne, the first of five NFL games on the service\u2019s expanded schedule this season.<\/p>\n
If you were to create in a lab a human being to demonstrate that the early lessons were received by Netflix, it would result in Pro Football Hall of Famer Luke Kuechly.<\/p>\n
How Luke Kuechly’s humble stardom paved the way to the Hall of Fame<\/p>\n
Joseph Person<\/p>\n
Kuechly\u2019s DNA is built on X&O chromosomes.<\/p>\n
In Kuechly\u2019s debut as Netflix\u2019s No. 1 game analyst, he was about football, first, second and third. Paired with an already established big-game voice, the 29-year-old Noah Eagle, Kuechly made the game the focus Thursday.<\/p>\n
Sports \u2014 especially the king of all media, the NFL \u2014 sell themselves. It doesn\u2019t need any Netflix special sauce. Just make sure the stream works and deliver a football game. Down in front!<\/p>\n
Kuechly had great detail in his analysis. His experience as a Carolina Panthers radio game analyst prepared him to get in and out in the proper amount of time. He was informative, though a bit dry. (We will take that every day of the week \u2014 and with the Thursday night game being held Friday morning in Australia, no one knew what day it was anyway.) No one wants analysts who are too distracting.<\/p>\n
While the 49ers beat the Rams 27-7, Eagle worked like a strong nose tackle in Kuechly\u2019s playing days, taking care of the blockers to let a linebacker have clean lanes to make tackles. Eagle gave Kuechly plenty of room to teach football.<\/p>\n
Analysts have talked about runners squaring their shoulders for decades, but Kuechly added at one point that it allows a ball carrier to easily go left or right. It was a quick, subtle point that allowed a viewer to understand the game better.<\/p>\n
In another instance, Kuechly explained how coaches teach to tackle high inside a team\u2019s own 5 so an opponent can\u2019t fall forward into the end zone. Simple, good stuff.<\/p>\n
Kuechly needs to explain some football vernacular a little more. If you say, \u201cPBU,\u201d just add \u201cpass breakup\u201d as not everyone watching grew up playing Pop Warner. It is an easy fix. Fans want to go inside, so just telling viewers the terms along with a one-line explanation goes a long way.<\/p>\n
NBC handled the behind-the-scenes production for Netflix, but the streamer\u2019s top sports executive, Gabe Spitzer, and his team decided the direction.<\/p>\n
It was a cleaner approach to the telecast, demonstrated by an easy-to-read on-screen scorebug and a pregame show, led by Elle Duncan with analysts Michael Irvin, Clay Matthews and Nick Foles, that was about the game.<\/p>\n
Joining Eagle and Kuechly were two sideline reporters, Tom Pelissero and MJ Acosta-Ruiz. The duo gave solid information, not overdoing it.<\/p>\n
Besides some kangaroo jackets with a hoodie that Netflix had NFL commissioner Roger Goodell try on in the pregame and had Brock Purdy, Fred Warner and Nick Bosa (who looked less than enthused) put on in the postgame, Netflix stuck to a straightforward script.<\/p>\n
Viewers don\u2019t have a choice of who produces the game, which is why, at a minimum, fans just want to see the game without distractions.<\/p>\n
On Thursday, Kuechly and Netflix squared their shoulders, showcasing the right tackling form. It was the streamer\u2019s best job yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Netflix started a little slow on it sports coverage. There was the uncalled-for NFL Christmas Day in-game Zoom…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":844392,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[63],"tags":[1820,349,560,99,1794],"class_list":["post-844391","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nfl","tag-los-angeles-rams","tag-nfl","tag-san-francisco-49ers","tag-sports","tag-sports-business"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844391","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=844391"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/844391\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/844392"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=844391"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=844391"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=844391"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}