NFL Playoffs 2024: Broadcasters To Bring Out Their A(udio) Games

More mics, improved signal paths, tight teamwork make for a great-sounding postseason

The outlook for the next two weeks calls for a mixture of football and more football. Starting with the upcoming Super Wild Card Weekend and continuing through the Divisional round next weekend and Championship Sunday on Jan. 28, the NFL season’s intense run-up to the Super Bowl compels all four broadcasters to deploy their A games in a tight timeframe. The sound for these crucial games will be as critical as any other element of the productions.

The Production Teams

The lineup for the games’ sound reads like a who’s who of television sports sound. At NBC Sports, which will air three Super Wild Card Weekend games, A1 Randy Pekich and submixer Matt Crocker will be aboard NEP ND1 in Houston, with A1 Ryan Outcalt and submixer Jeremy Katz in the native-IP Game Creek Video Prime truck for the Peacock streamcast (the postseason game to go out exclusively on a streaming channel) in Kansas City on Saturday. Sunday’s game in Detroit will have A1 Wendel Stevens and submixer Dan Haggard aboard NEP SNF1.

For CBS Sports’ Pittsburgh Steelers–Buffalo Bills game on Sunday, A1 Lee Pfannerstill and submixer Karen Pearce will be aboard Supershooter CBS, working with Technical Managers Pete Kallander and Sarah Hammond and Production Managers Krissi Florian and Katey Maguire.

Fox Sports’ A1 Jamie McCombs and submixer Eddie Verstrate join RF Manager Mike Davis aboard Game Creek Encore for the Dallas–Green Bay Wild Card and subsequent Divisional and Championship games.

ESPN has its usual Monday-night primetime slot for the Eagles–Buccaneers game in Tampa, with A1 Scott Pray and submixer Jonathan Freed aboard NEP EN1. That same lineup, plus RF Manager Loren Sherman, will handle the Divisional game the following Saturday.

Some New Wrinkles

“It’ll be mostly what we deploy for a typical Monday-night game, except it’ll be on a Saturday,” says Steve Carter, director, specialist operations, ESPN. He notes that a second sideline reporter, Laura Rutledge, is being added for coverage on both sidelines for the Wild Card and Divisional games. “The real challenge will be logistical: if we have to go from Tampa to San Francisco for the next game, that’s a 60-hour run in less than a week.”

ESPN Senior Remote Operations Specialist Jack Coffey says the team hopes for exciting games and adds that their luck seems to be holding: “We were on a call with the other networks on this, and it was pointed out how cold it’s going to be in Kansas City while we’re in Tampa.” A 0-degree temperature, he notes, is forecast for the KC 7 p.m. kickoff.

(The Chiefs’ opponents, the Miami Dolphins, are taking the weather forecast seriously: they have lost 10 straight when the temperature at kickoff is below 40F.)

Fox Sports deployed six manned parab microphones all season, two more than for most NFL telecasts. A1 McCombs says the additional sideline mics, plus the mics that come with the supplementary cameras deployed for postseason productions, bring in that much more sound from the field. Furthermore, he adds, the sonic quality has been upped, thanks to the migration to an all-digital Dante-based signal infrastructure.

“That has also improved how we interface with the NFL’s Enhanced Audio from the field,” he explains, referring to the league-controlled player sound. “Now [the league] can listen back to their mix from us, with no signal loss or degradation. It has improved the fidelity of the sound.”

All-Star Sound

The criticality of the NFL Postseason packs the intensity of an entire year’s play into the two weeks leading up to the Super Bowl. And while the NFL’s big season capper gets much of the attention, the two postseason weeks are their own kind of all-star series. They also underscore the important dimension that audio provides for the sport on television.

“Amazing audio for seminal events like the NFL Playoffs certainly has to do with the technology and number of microphones deployed, but most of it is sound management and teamwork,” observes Michael Davies, EVP, field and technical management and operations, Fox Sports. “The A1 and effects submixer in the truck, the six manned parabolic microphones, as well as the camera mics on and above the field, Kevin [Burkhardt] and Greg [Olsen] in the booth, and, of course, Fox Sports Lead NFL Director Rich Russo and [NFL and Super Bowl Producer] Rich Zyontz at the front bench all come together in making Fox audio as amazing as it is.”