In what’s becoming an all-too-familiar pattern, Al Michaels had another rough night calling Thursday Night Football.
The legendary broadcaster’s call of the Rams-Seahawks overtime thriller on Thursday felt almost disengaged. As the NFC West rivals traded blows in a game with serious postseason implications, Michaels’ delivery was so flat, so devoid of urgency during Puka Nacua’s go-ahead touchdown from Matthew Stafford that viewers genuinely thought the play had been called back.
Matthew Stafford and Puka Nacua give the Rams the lead over the Seahawks in OT!
Al Michaels with the play-by-play call for Prime Video. 🏈🎙️ #TNF #NFL pic.twitter.com/heHpyXjUMv
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 19, 2025
Listen to that call and try to tell yourself it matches the moment. You can’t.
“So that was one of the best games of the NFL season, and one of the best Thursday Night Football games, but I got to talk about something else here,” said Kofie Yeboah. “Al Michaels, it’s time to retire, buddy. It’s over. Oh my goodness. Now, don’t get me wrong, Al Michaels is a sports broadcasting legend, but brother, the fastball’s gone; the curveball’s gone; the slider’s gone. It’s just changeups. It’s straight up just change-ups.”
@kofiewhy Al Michaels needs to retire man #NFL #SPORTS ♬ Jazz Mood – Lady-M
But it’s not just content creators like Yeboah who feel this way. This has become a weekly ritual. Every Thursday night, the same complaints flood social media as thousands and thousands of viewers reach the same uncomfortable conclusion week after week.
Al Michaels….. it’s time
— Kofie (@Kofie) December 19, 2025
al michaels so washed…. hes at that stage in his career like when grandma shouldn’t be cooking thanksgiving dinner anymore and should pass the duties off to auntie but you dont have the heart to tell em
— Tony X (@soIoucity) December 19, 2025
Al Michaels, thank you for your service but it’s time.
— Brett Kollmann (@BrettKollmann) December 19, 2025
Al Michaels is an absolute legend but it’s time to hang it up. Guy is about 3 seconds behind every play and talks with the enthusiasm of a school librarian
— Film Watchers (@Filmwatchers1) December 19, 2025
Al Michaels is so washed. I know we say it every week but it’s like he’s watching the game on 3 second delay.
— Jack Mac (@JackMac) December 19, 2025
Al Michaels is a legend, but he has zero excitement for any big plays. It’s a tough listen every Thursday night.
— MileHighGreco (@MileHighGreco) December 19, 2025
Al Michaels on Thursday Night Football vs Al Michaels on Sunday Night Football pic.twitter.com/glSzruQgH4
— Simpsons NFL (@TheSimpsonsNFL) December 19, 2025
Not Al Michaels’ finest two minutes there
— Alex Sherman (@sherman4949) December 19, 2025
Thursday night’s performance wasn’t an aberration — it’s become the norm for Michaels on Amazon’s Thursday Night Football package. This has been building throughout his post-NBC tenure, with nearly every week bringing a fresh wave of criticism about his lack of energy and enthusiasm in the booth.
The issue isn’t that Michaels needs to be screaming his guts out on every play. Nobody’s asking him to become Gus Johnson or Kevin Harlan. But there’s a massive gap between manufactured hype and what we’re getting now, which often feels like someone reading the morning traffic report.
What makes this particularly frustrating is that we know what great Al Michaels sounds like. This is the voice of “Do you believe in miracles?” This is someone who’s called Super Bowls, Olympic hockey gold medals, and countless iconic NFL moments. But at 81 years old and in his fourth season calling Thursday Night Football for Prime Video, Michaels seems to be running on fumes.
The timing is off, the energy is gone, and perhaps most damning, he frequently sounds like he’s a few seconds behind the action, as if he’s watching on a delayed feed rather than sitting in the stadium.
This puts Amazon in an incredibly awkward position. Michaels is a legend, and nobody wants to be the one to tell a legend it’s time to hang it up. But Amazon is paying billions of dollars for Thursday Night Football, and the broadcast experience matters. They’ve invested heavily in production quality, studio shows, and the expansion of their NFL coverage. Having a play-by-play announcer who sounds disengaged actively undermines all of that.
The tragedy here is that this should be a celebration of an incredible career, not a weekly referendum on whether it’s time to retire. Michaels has earned the right to go out on his own terms. But when the calls are so noticeably flat that viewers think big plays were called back, when social media erupts every Thursday night with the same concerns, when even those defending Michaels acknowledge the decline, it becomes impossible to ignore.
Kirk Herbstreit, who works alongside Michaels in the booth, has defended his partner against the enthusiastic criticism, noting that Michaels brings credibility and experience. And that’s true. But credibility and experience can’t make up for calls that don’t match the moment.
The question isn’t whether Al Michaels was great. He was — he’s a Hall of Famer for a reason. The question is whether this version of Al Michaels is still serving the broadcasts well, and whether it’s fair to him or to viewers to keep pretending everything is fine when it clearly isn’t.
Thursday night was just the latest example of a problem that’s becoming harder to overlook each week. At some point, someone’s going to have to have a difficult conversation.
What is Al Michaels’s future on Thursday Night Football?
Prime Video’s Jay Marine says they are “taking it year-by-year” and Amazon has not talked about 2026 yet with Michaels.
Presented by @oneelevate_ pic.twitter.com/xmyxqJKQWC
— Front Office Sports (@FOS) September 16, 2025
The only question is whether that happens before or after more nights like this one.