ESPN is doing another Monday night shuffle.
With an increase in “Monday Night Football” secondary games beginning in the 2023 season, the network is replacing play-by-player Steve Levy with Chris Fowler on its second team, The Post has learned.
It is somewhat of an odd move, because Fowler is ESPN’s lead college game-caller and hasn’t stood out when he has done NFL games. He will have to quickly develop chemistry with new analysts.
Fowler calls the top NCAA game each week and the NCAA national championship with Kirk Herbstreit. He previously called some NFL games with Herbstreit, which ended when Herbstreit added Amazon Prime Video’s “Thursday Night Football” to his ESPN college responsibilities last season.
While the big money duo of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman will remain on the No. 1 team, Fowler will be on the No. 2 crew. The analysts last year with Levy were Louis Riddick and Dan Orlovsky.
With the start of ESPN’s new NFL TV agreement, there will be a total of five extra games Buck and Aikman won’t do, including an international one.
Fowler recently signed a new deal with ESPN. He was coming off a reported nine-year contract in the mid-$30 million range with ESPN and a separate contract with ABC. ESPN has been looking to cut expenses, so he did not come anywhere near Buck’s $15 million per year deal. At the end, ESPN added responsibilities to sweeten the pot a little. Fowler’s new salary is not known.
Levy has been a good soldier throughout his MNF experience, though he wasn’t put in the best position to succeed. During his first year, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, games were played with no fans in the stands and no in-person meetings with his booth partners, Riddick and Brian Griese. That trio received one more year together under normal circumstances before Buck and Aikman were brought in last year. Aikman signed a five-year, $90 million deal, while Buck was for five years and $75 million.
Last season, after Griese left to become the 49ers’ quarterbacks coach, ESPN put Orlovsky in his place on the second MNF team with Riddick and Levy.
ESPN has a tendency to give people “we feel bad” jobs after it wrongs them. That seemed like the case with Levy, but now they apparently don’t feel as badly.
Levy is an excellent host. He leads the NHL studio coverage for ESPN and has a sterling behind-the-scenes reputation. While he is a good play-by-player, he even said he understood being replaced by Buck.
When Levy was in the MNF booth, Fowler spoke openly about one day maybe moving to the lead MNF team. That opportunity was lost when Buck showed up.
The new crew is now going to have to try to develop chemistry in a small subset of games.
ESPN is turning to Fowler when, if it wanted to make a change, it could have tried an up-and-coming play-by-player to attempt to create a new star. The network has missed the boat in recent years by letting the likes of Adam Amin and Jason Benetti exit for Fox Sports.
Instead, now they have swapped Fowler in for Levy.
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