Amazon’s Thursday Night Football Makes Splashy Debut With A Few Glitches

Amazon Prime’s Thursday Night Football telecast between the Kansas City Chiefs and Los Angeles Chargers opened with sketches and silhouettes of players while listing the TNF cast as if it was a movie — all to the tune of Foreigner’s “Feels Like the First Time.”’

It felt like the start of a big-budget blockbuster — and for good reason.

AmazonAMZN
signed an 11-year, $13 billion deal with the NFL last March.

“We are so excited to have Thursday Night Football be part of Prime Video,” said Lisa Leung, Amazon Prime’s director of member growth and business intelligence. “One of our top priorities is that we create the best streaming experience a customer could have.”

Streaming viewers had four boxes to choose from: National broadcast, TNF en Espanol, Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats and TNF with Dude Perfect.

The main telecast drew complaints about the audio being off, the pictures being blurry and buffering issues, especially during the first half. Others said the broadcast was crip and issues were a probably a result of poor technology in the viewer’s household.

Notably, Amazon did not have an obvious icon to indicate the number timeouts of each team had. That became pertinent when the Chiefs took over with 53 seconds left in first half.

Amazon, though, displayed some nice visuals, including a photo juxtaposing Chargers head coach Brandon Staley and Chiefs head coach Andy Reid in 1999. Staley was still a high school football player while Reid was already head coach of the Philadelphia Eagles.

Another poignant shot showed Chiefs defensive tackle Chris Jones sucking oxygen from a tank after his crucial third-down stop of Austin Ekeler in the fourth quarter.

Amazon signed broadcasters Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit for deals reportedly worth more than $10 million annually for each announcer.

Michaels, perhaps the best play-by-play sportscaster of all time, too often didn’t verbalize how many yards the offensive player recorded on each play. In one example, he didn’t mention how many yards Chiefs wide receiver Mecole Hardman lost when the play was blown up, ending the opening drive.

Herbstreit was sharp. He offered strong analysis, praising rookie Zion Johnson’s blocking of Jones.

He deftly described how DeAndre Carter went in motion with 12:34 left in the fourth quarter. Carter ended up getting a first-down reception, but Herbstreit pointed out that if the Chiefs defense was in a man-to-man scheme, the Chargers would’ve handed off to Carter.

And he astutely pointed out that gassed Chargers tight end Gerald Everett signaled to go out and didn’t fight for the ball on the game-altering 99-yard pick-6 by Jaylen Watson.

Herbstreit and Michaels were not the only viewing option.

In addition to the Spanish and Prime Vision options, Amazon had the controversial Dude Perfect. From their 30,000-square-foot headquarters in Frisco, Texas, the crew tried to predict what would happen while welcoming a parade of dunk tanks.

“We really liked their personality and their character,” Leung said.

That group first met in college at Texas A&M University. Tyler Toney, twins Cory and Coby Cotton, Garrett Hilbert and Cody Jones then formed Dude Perfect in 2009, growing their viral sports and comedic content into 58 million subscribers on YouTube, 16.4 million on TikTok and 11.6 million on Instagram.

Unlike the ManningCast, the group didn’t really discuss what was going on, and the action was hard to follow. Others, though, praised how much their kids enjoyed the Dude Perfect option.

It was peculiar that Dude Perfect didn’t have a halftime show. Instead the main feed was shown.

That halftime, pregame and postgame show led by Charissa Thompson, Tony Gonzalez, Ryan Fitzpatrick and Richard Sherman was one of the strengths of the night.

Fitzpatrick, the former quarterback, provided levity, saying he never completed a pass to Gonzalez, the former Chiefs tight end, but did so plenty of times to Sherman, a former cornerback, and deadpanning to Gonzalez that “Travis Kelce was the best tight end in Chiefs history.”

Sherman wisely observed at halftime that the Chargers had no fear of the Chiefs’ secondary, which featured three rookies, in the first half. The Chiefs, however, improved in the second, holding Mike Williams to two catches and obviously getting the pick-6.

The pregame show also featured Michael Smith, Taylor Rooks and Andrew Whitworth in lesser roles.

It’s a large cast, demonstrating how Amazon is going all in.

“We look it as a way for us to sign up customers for Prime,” Leung said, “that otherwise wouldn’t have signed up without TNF.”