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As ESPN's Monday Night Football booth may see a new face alongside Joe Buck next season, the network's potential choice is already generating a divide among NFL enthusiasts. With Troy Aikman's future at ESPN increasingly uncertain, Fox analyst Greg Olsen has surfaced as the favorite to step in, per a report from The Athletic's Andrew Marchand.
Olsen, currently Fox's No. 2 game analyst, is "widely considered by people inside the sports media industry to be the favorite to replace Aikman," Marchand wrote. The report also mentioned other possibilities ESPN might explore, such as pursuing Peyton or Eli Manning, Travis or Jason Kelce, or considering Kirk Herbstreit, who recently signed an NFL deal with Prime Video.
Olsen's connection to ESPN is minimal; he has met chairman Jimmy Pitaro and content president Burke Magnus only once, briefly shaking hands when he visited the network's luxury box during halftime of last season's College Football Playoff championship between his alma mater, Miami, and Buck's Indiana. Despite this, Olsen's credentials are strong: he called Super Bowl 57 and, over two seasons alongside Kevin Burkhardt, won a Sports Emmy. He is now a three-time Sports Emmy winner, having moved to Fox's No. 2 team with Joe Davis after Tom Brady displaced him from the top booth and won the 2026 Sports Emmy for Outstanding Event Analyst over a field that included Brady. Marchand's report noted Olsen's eagerness to return to a network's top booth.
The Athletic described the current ESPN MNF partnership as one that has frayed publicly. Buck agreed to a new six-year, $108 million deal with ESPN, and neither he nor the network informed Aikman. Aikman perceived this as a betrayal, while Buck felt it mirrored how Aikman had handled his own business during their time together. According to The Athletic, ESPN has sided with Buck, though the plan remains for Aikman and Buck to finish the season together, culminating in ESPN's first Super Bowl broadcast on Feb. 14.
Key Analysis
Fan reactions to the potential Olsen hire have been mixed. Supporters didn't need convincing: one fan welcomed the news, saying, "Good. Greg Olsen is the best in the game." Another added, "He's a great analyst not like captain obvious." A third pointed to the Fox shuffle that cost Olsen his top job: "He's great, Brady is turning out good, but wasn't at Olsen's level when he replaced him, this will be a great team."
Not everyone is sold, however. One fan blamed the network rather than Olsen: "Just pay Troy. ESPN always breaks up a good thing and makes it substantially worse." Aikman's side opened talks at $30 million per year, Puck reported last week, using Brady's $37.5 million per-season rate at Fox as a benchmark. Sources told The Athletic that ESPN is cutting costs with another round of layoffs coming and that executives see the Buck-Aikman relationship as too strained to continue.
Others directed criticism at Olsen himself. One fan didn't mince words: "He's awful, what a downgrade." Another laid out a longer case: "Greg Olsen is horrible. He literally just has a good voice. He doesn't research both teams enough, has a heavy bias, and says a whole lot of nothing all the time just to fill in dialogue."
If ESPN does land on Olsen, there would be some irony. The Athletic reported that Buck's 2022 exit from Fox was driven in part by his reluctance to break in Olsen, then a raw analyst, and his doubt that Fox could realistically sign Brady. Richard Deitsch reported that Olsen's Fox contract ends once this season wraps up.
Originally reported by yahoo.