Tonight’s Thursday Night Football game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Buffalo Bills will be on Amazon Prime. Both teams look to bounce back after suffering tough last-second losses last week.
Kickoff will be at 8:15 p.m. ET, and the pregame show starts at 7 p.m. ET. Who will be announcing the Week 8 matchup?
From the current NFL standings to team depth charts to coverage of every game in the 18-week NFL schedule, we have all the news from around the league to keep you up to speed!
Who Will Be Announcing the Buccaneers-Bills Broadcast Tonight?
Al Michaels will be doing play-by-play, Kirk Herbstreit is providing analysis, and Kaylee Hartung is reporting from the sidelines.
Herbstreit, who is in his second season with Amazon Prime, has been one of the faces of college football on ESPN since the 1990s.
MORE: NFL Offense Rankings 2023
He has been an analyst on College GameDay since 1996 and, in 2006, was added as a lead game analyst for ESPN and ABC. Herbstreit played quarterback at Ohio State from 1989 to 1992 and was the team’s starter and MVP as a senior.
Hartung has worked with ESPN, Longhorn Network, SEC Network, CNN, and ABC during her career. She is currently a contributing correspondent for NBC’s TODAY Show.
Charissa Thompson hosts the pregame show that features former NFL players Richard Sherman, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Andrew Whitworth, and Tony Gonzalez.
Ryan Fitzpatrick’s Time in Buffalo and Tampa Bay
Fitzpatrick played with nine teams during his 17-year career, from 2005 to 2021. He was a quarterback for four seasons with the Bills and two seasons with the Buccaneers.
Fitzpatrick was 20-33 as a starter with the Bills from 2009 to 2012. In 55 games, he had a 59.8% completion percentage with 80 touchdowns and 64 interceptions. In 2011, Fitzpatrick led the Bills to a 4-2 start, and the team signed him to a six-year, $59 million extension. The Bills lost eight of the final 10 games, as Fitzpatrick had 12 touchdowns and 17 interceptions. Buffalo cut the quarterback after the team went 6-10 in the 2012 season.
The FitzMagic character took off when he was with Tampa Bay.
Man of the hour. #GoBucs pic.twitter.com/28OM7KktNc
— Tampa Bay Buccaneers (@Buccaneers)
Fitzpatrick played 14 games in two seasons with the Buccaneers, from 2017 to 2018. He was 4-6 as a starter with 24 touchdowns and 15 interceptions in 14 career games in Tampa Bay. Fitzpatrick went on to play three more years in the NFL before retiring after the 2021 season.
Wide Right
Al Michaels’ voice is tied to several significant moments in sports history, including the Miracle on Ice in the 1980 Olympics and the earthquake during the 1989 World Series. His voice is also connected to the Bills going to and losing four straight Super Bowls in the 1990s.
Michaels was the play-by-play announcer for ABC’s coverage of Super Bowl XXV between the Bills and New York Giants. It was Buffalo’s first Super Bowl appearance and the only one Michaels called.
With the Bills trailing by one point in the final minute, Jim Kelly and Thurman Thomas marched Buffalo down into field goal range with a chance to win the Super Bowl. Scott Norwood’s 47-yard field goal attempt with eight seconds left went to the right of the upright, and Michaels’ call was simply, “No good. Wide right.”
This was the closest the Bills came to winning a Super Bowl during that run, and “wide right” lingers in the memories of the fans as a reminder of how close they were to a championship.
