Noah Eagle spent his Saturday night in South Bend, Indiana. He’s NBC’s announcer for their Notre Dame games, and so it was a huge assignment — he called the Fighting Irish win over the No. 1 team in the country, Miami.
Eagle has another massive assignment on Sunday night, an unexpected one — he’s going to be the play-by-play announcer for the Chicago Bears‘ home game against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in place of Mike Tirico.
The news came out Sunday afternoon, and it came by surprise to the football world.
Here’s what we know about what’s going on.
What Happened to Mike Tirico?
Tirico put out a statement on Sunday saying that he’d be unable to work the game on Sunday night. A reason wasn’t specified.
This is what his full statement said:
“Unfortunately, I will have to miss tonight’s game in Chicago due to a health issue. I look forward to watching tonight and can’t wait to be back with Cris, Melissa and the rest of our SNF team next Sunday night in Cincinnati.”
The NBC post on social media then included this information: “Noah Eagle will call tonight’s game with Cris Collinsworth and Melissa Stark.”
No further details were given.
Why is Noah Eagle Announcing SNF?
Eagle is the replacement that NBC chose for Tirico on short notice, likely for a couple different reasons.
It didn’t hurt that Eagle was already in the Midwest after calling the Notre Dame game on Saturday night.
Eagle is also one of NBC’s best football announcers in general. That’s why he has the Notre Dame assignment all season long in the first place.
And to help matters further — Eagle has called NFL games before, both for Peacock and for Netflix.
The one tough part for Eagle is that he won’t have gotten the week’s worth of prep that the Sunday Night Football play-by-play man would normally get. But as far as the actual mechanics of announcing, Eagle should be in good shape.
Noah Eagle’s Dad
Noah Eagle is a second-generation NFL broadcaster.
His dad, Ian Eagle, is one of the top play-by-play guys in sports.
On Sunday, Ian Eagle called the Carolina Panthers‘ home matchup against the Denver Broncos for CBS.
Why Noah Eagle is Announcing Sunday Night Football, not Mike Tirico