A former NFL MVP with Super Bowl experience starts a new broadcasting job today, if you haven’t heard.
Not that guy. The other one. Former Falcons (and Colts for one forgettable season) quarterback Matt Ryan.
After a year of calling games with Andrew Catalon and Tiki Barber, Ryan has moved to the studio, taking a spot on The NFL Today. He vows not to be bland and vanilla and, ultimately, boring in the job. That perception was a reality of his role within a football team.
“You’re protecting the players that you’re with, the coaching staff, a front office, an ownership group,” Ryan told Jake Kring-Schreifels of FrontOfficeSports.com. “I think some of that strips away your personality.”
While calling games last year, Ryan realized the job is now very different.
“It’s not my job to protect that team,” Ryan said. “It’s my job to tell you what I think is going on.”
When Ryan gets started later today with James Brown, Bill Cowher, Nate Burleson, and J.J. Watt, he’ll be asking himself these questions: "[W]hat do I bring? What’s different? What’s unique?’”
It would be ironic, to say the least, if the much-hyped Brady paints himself into a corner of politically palatable opinions while calling games and if Ryan becomes the guy who speaks his mind and stirs the shit.
For the sake of CBS, here’s hoping he does. The morning pregame shows are becoming less and less important, given that the information that used to be under wraps until Brent Musberger said, “You are looking live . . . .” now lives in every nook and cranny of your phone, from the moment you roll out of bed.
The morning pregame shows have to bring something new, something different, something fresh. They need personalities who truly inform the audience and/or articulate the things the viewers didn’t know they were thinking. If the networks are going to insist on using only former players and coaches to do that, they need to hope that at least one of them will start doing the stuff that few of them currently do, frankly.
Today, Ryan gets his first chance to stand out from a crowd that prefers to keep it within the football buoys.
UDPATE 10:46 a.m. ET: A prior version of this item incorrectly identified the CBS studio pregame show as Inside the NFL. It’s not. It’s The NFL Today. Which proves that my brain is starting to fail me or that the pregame/previews shows have become so irrelevant that people can’t keep their names straight. Or both.
