Rating the FOX announcers for Vikings-Falcons
Joe Davis, Greg Olsen and sideline reporter Pam Oliver will have the call at noon Sunday on FOX.
Having covered the sports TV-radio beat for the Star Tribune for eight years, I found there was plenty of interest in that side of the business.
We tune into games to watch the action, but the viewing experience either can be enhanced or diminished by those describing what is going on.
Thus, each week I’m providing a brief analysis of who will be in the booth to call the Vikings’ game and whether the assignment is a good or bad one.
Network and broadcast team: Joe Davis and Greg Olsen will have the call at noon Sunday on FOX. Pam Oliver will be the sideline reporter.
Rating the duo: 8 on a scale of 1-10.
Why that rating? This will be the second consecutive week that FOX’s No. 2 NFL team has been assigned to the Vikings. If you are a regular reader of this feature, you know that’s not a bad thing.
Olsen is the best game analyst in the NFL right now. He’s not afraid to criticize and has excellent insight that comes both from his 14-year career at tight end and the fact that he doesn’t just rely on past experiences for his commentary.
I like Olsen more than Tom Brady, who is FOX’s top NFL analyst, but it is interesting that the Vikings have gone 10-2 but have yet to see the network’s top pairing of Kevin Burkhardt and Brady.
Burkhardt and Brady will be in Los Angeles on Sunday to call Bills-Rams in the late-afternoon window. That game will be aired to much of the country.
Vikings-Falcons carries plenty of intrigue because it will be Kirk Cousins’ first game against his former team since he signed with Atlanta last March as a free agent. That storyline appeared to make this a perfect fit for a prime-time game, but, instead Vikings-Falcons and Panthers-Eagles will be shown to approximately the same amount of markets in the U.S.