Pat McAfee spent years on NFL fields as a punter for the Indianapolis Colts.
He was back on an NFL field on Monday night, sort of.
McAfee was part of an “alt cast” for ESPN’s Monday Night Football — an alternate television broadcast that would bring a different spin as a companion offering alongside the traditional broadcast with Joe Buck and Tory Aikman.
This alternate approach was called “Field Pass,” and it featured McAfee standing behind one end zone with Dan Orlovsky and Darius Butler as the San Francisco 49ers took on the Washington Commanders.
It was a relatively entertaining broadcast, featuring some free-wheeling thoughts by McAfee and his companions but also getting into a lot of football nuance that some viewers surely appreciated.
It just wasn’t watched by as many people as some expected.
Pat McAfee Alt Cast News
Pro Football Talk’s Mike Florio shared some numbers on Thursday, and he compared McAfee’s broadcast to the ManningCast, which features Peyton and Eli Manning for some Monday night games (but not this one).
“When ESPN announced that it would produce a Pat McAfee-led alt cast during the Monday night games that don’t feature a ManningCast, I sensed trouble on the horizon,” Florio writes. “The McAfee production, I believed, would consistently outperform the Manning show, creating awkwardness within the Disney family. A different kind of awkwardness has emerged. The first edition of the McAfee alt cast was outperformed during the same window by a Next Gen Stats alt cast on NFL Network. Via Austin Karp of Sports Business Journal, the McAfee alt cast on ESPN2 generated 351,000 viewers. The Next Gen Stats edition on NFL Network drew 469,000. Even with the ManningCast numbers gradually and consistently dropping, it has never dipped to 500,000. At one point, when it was new and fresh (and when the main booth didn’t include Joe Buck and Troy Aikman), the ManningCast consistently exceeded one million viewers per game.”
It’s hard to know exactly what contributes to given viewership. How easy is a broadcast to find? Do fans even know it’s happening?
And then there’s the matter of some fans loving McAfee while others hate him. The polarizing former punter was always going to be a bit of a wild card here.
Still, ESPN likely hoped for better numbers.
What’s Next?
McAfee has five more alternate telecasts scheduled for ESPN during the regular season. The next one is Week 9 when the Buffalo Bills take on the Minnesota Vikings.
ESPN is also planning on both a ManningCast and a McAfee Field Pass telecast during the Super Bowl.
Pat McAfee isn’t going anywhere, that’s for sure.
Pat McAfee Gets Bad News on ESPN Alt Cast