How Thursday Night Football studio crew recreated locker room feel: ‘Like a family reunion’
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CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Ryan Fitzpatrick was unwell.
A stomach bug made its way through the Fitzpatrick family over the previous weekend, and on this Thursday morning inside a luxury hotel’s conference room, it struck the patriarch with vengeance.
Armed with an empty stainless steel bucket just in case, Fitzpatrick played hurt through a virtual United Service Organizations (USO) Tour alongside fellow Prime Video Thursday Night Football studio analysts Richard Sherman and Andrew Whitworth.
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Sherman occasionally rubbed his new friend’s back between visits with members of the armed forces on Nov. 10, the day before Veterans Day, with the Carolina Panthers hosting the Atlanta Falcons later that night.
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The trio, all three of whom stepped away from football after last season, are navigating life beyond the game together while maintaining a connection to the league on a weekly basis. From Wednesday night to Friday morning, they are together — recreating a locker-room feel so many ex-players long for once their playing days expire — as part of Amazon’s first year as the exclusive Thursday night rightsholder.
“We all get along so well,” Whitworth told USA TODAY Sports. “Instantly, almost. It’s crazy.”
Inside TNF production meeting
Much of what is discussed in the hour-long pregame show is ironed out in the morning. .
Spoon Daftary, Prime Video coordinating producer, kicks off the 9 a.m. meeting by congratulating the room — filled with members of the production and graphics team — on reaching the halfway point of the season and introduces the stranger in the room (this reporter). An in-depth conversation about the three-page rundown in front of each person followed. Tony Gonzalez, the fourth analyst on the desk and a Hall of Fame tight end, practiced an answer for how he assesses the state of the NFC South division.
After somebody pointed out that ex-NFL linebacker Jessie Tuggle is the father of Falcons defensive tackle Grady Jarrett, the majority of the room was surprised.
“Did nobody read the (expletive) notes?” the Harvard-educated Fitzpatrick said. Laughter filled the room.
Fitzpatrick, the former quarterback who played for nine teams over 17 NFL seasons, continued his comedic stretch with a dad joke a few minutes later once the meeting moved to discussing the fourth segment of the pregame show.
Fitzpatrick had two notebooks with him and was armed with NextGen stats about the Falcons’ play-action attack. “They’re not as good as they should be,” he said. Gonzalez offered his perspective on the team’s inability to find tight end Kyle Pitts, the 2021 No. 4 overall pick; that night, Carolina held Pitts to two catches and 28 receiving yards. Throwing the ball high should be a priority for quarterback Marcus Mariota, he said, and the production team said it will include highlights of Pitts snagging high balls from Matt Ryan from last season.
Gonzalez had 126 catches before Pitts was born, Fitzpatrick said.
“I don’t know if that’s a fun stat or not,” he said.
“It’s not,” Gonzalez replied, and the room collectively chuckled once again.
Thompson suggested a postgame segment on non-quarterback MVP candidates, while Sherman, who played for Seattle for seven seasons, made a pitch for Seahawks quarterback Geno Smith’s MVP candidacy.
Reporter Taylor Rooks, who puts together feature spots for the shows, offered a positive outlook on the rain forecast that ultimately did not pan out. To celebrate the end of the meeting, Sherman tossed a napkin into the air. “Everybody root for a Packers win!” a producer said, since the Prime Video team will be in Green Bay on Thursday for Week 11 against the Tennessee Titans. (Indeed, the Packers defeated the Cowboys in overtime Sunday.)
Ten hours later, host Charissa Thompson – the glue of the operation – would start the pregame show at 7 p.m. sharp. (Fitzpatrick would persevere until close to midnight, when the postgame program ended.)
Budding bromance, big goals
In June, a skeleton crew of the studio team — Thompson, Gonzalez and a handful of executives — went to dinner in Los Angeles. Sherman and Fitzpatrick somehow entered the wrong car and had to find their own way to the restaurant. They wandered Sunset Boulevard together and arrived late to dinner.
“It was like staging a bonding opportunity,” Amazon director of live global sports production Jared Stacy told USA TODAY Sports, and “watching this odd-couple magic in front of your eyes.”
Later that night, they attended a comedy show. The bromance was born.
Months later, Sherman refers to himself as a “Brother Fitzpatrick.” Fitzpatrick’s eldest son, Brady, is playing junior varsity football. Fitzpatrick wants to be hands-off with his son when it comes to football.
“I’m like no, no hands-off, baby,” Sherman told USA TODAY Sports. “Brady, toss the pill!”
Sherman, who played cornerback for 11 seasons and won a Super Bowl with the Seahawks, had studied Fitzpatrick on tape for a decade.
“You feel like you get to know somebody really intimately because you watch them so much. You’re like a stalker,” Sherman said. “I’m watching this dude over and over and over.”
Fitzpatrick met his expectations and can joke with the best of them, Sherman said. What Sherman appreciates most about his buddy is that he doesn’t take himself too seriously.
“That’s what makes everything work … when people don’t have egos and can joke and can be self-deprecating,” Sherman said.
For Whitworth, the relationship building reminds him of his first season with the Los Angeles Rams in 2017 and the immediate connection he had with head coach Sean McVay. Whitworth had spent the first 11 seasons of his 16-year NFL career with the Cincinnati Bengals and walked away after winning Super Bowl 56 with the Rams in February.
“Out of nowhere, you’re like, ‘Have we known each other our whole lives?’ Because our rapport is that way. It’s crazy,” he said.
The studio team keeps up with each other throughout the week, and the group chat is always popping. Some members confidentially revealed they have the group on mute because it can be a flood of messages.
Before games, if nobody has a pregame interview to conduct, everybody will relax until rehearsal at 6 p.m. Some NFL analysts watch warmups to track injuries or unlock a depth chart question. Not these guys.
“I get a lot of joy out of watching them pregame,” TNF news analyst Michael Smith told USA TODAY Sports. “Every stadium, and every game, is like a family reunion.”
Everybody knows them, Smith said, and it speaks volumes about who they are.
“I promise you,” Sherman said, “we’re just having a good time.”
To Amazon executives, the camaraderie is more than welcome. With aspirations to become the NFL’s version of “Inside the NBA,” that level of chemistry is a necessity.
It would also require a level of hijinks, and this crew is also clearly capable of it. The morning of the first Prime Video broadcast, Sept. 15, Stacy was a ball of nerves at their Kansas City hotel. In the morning, he found Sherman and Fitzpatrick talking in the lobby. Whitworth was in the corner doing a live Zoom for NFL Network’s “Good Morning Football.” Stacy watched Fitzpatrick and Sherman realize Whitworth was on TV and in the same room as them.
“Within two minutes, Ryan and Richard are standing on top of a bar dancing in this lobby,” Stacy said. “People are coming through. There are conferences there. That put me so at ease for the day.”
Through the first nine broadcasts, TNF Nightcap averaged 1.69 million viewers, Amazon said, while the pregame show averaged 1.21 million. The younger median age (42.7) compared to other primetime post-game shows is a testament to the fresh-off-the-field perspective from Sherman, Whitworth and Fitzpatrick.
“You can feel it up there,” Sherman said. “You can feel the energy when things are going well, when the energy is high, and people are having a good time. You can feel it through the TV. I think people watching us can feel it when we’re having a good time, and it’s just genuine.”
Follow Chris Bumbaca on Twitter @BOOMbaca.
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: How Thursday Night Football studio crew recreated locker room feel: ‘Like a family reunion’