Missing Greg Olsen: How is it that TV’s best broadcaster has been benched for NFL playoffs?
There’s not a lot of Carolina Panther representation left in these NFL playoffs.
The Panthers, themselves, of course, missed the postseason for the seventh year in a row. In the just-concluded first round of the playoffs, the two most high-profile former Panthers both lost — Minnesota quarterback Sam Darnold and Tampa Bay QB Baker Mayfield.
There are still some former Panthers around, and we’ll get to them shortly. But there’s one ex-Panther I’m missing the most in these playoffs, somebody whose absence is a TV travesty:
Greg Olsen.
The former Pro Bowl tight end, who has broadcast games for Fox Sports since 2021, has been benched for these playoffs so Tom Brady could take all the plum assignments with Olsen’s former play-by-play partner, Kevin Burkhardt.
Now I know Brady is famous and won a gazillion Super Bowls. But as almost anyone who has listened to Olsen and Brady for any length of time knows, Olsen’s demotion makes no sense.
While Brady has improved in his rookie broadcasting season and is now passable in the lead analyst role for Fox, he too often is a master of the obvious. The national reviews for his work have been mixed.
Olsen, on the other hand, is the best live broadcaster in the game. From the booth, he routinely sees something the average viewer doesn’t and points it out so quickly that it seems like a magic trick — and then he does it 50 times every Sunday.
And so after watching and listening to a large portion of all six playoff broadcasts this past weekend, I really missed Olsen. I found myself following his X account for analysis.
Tom Brady’s conflict of interest
Perhaps this will all work itself out. Olsen, who called a Super Bowl for Fox Sports in February 2023 and did it seamlessly, is well-regarded everywhere and was still on the No. 2 broadcasting team for Fox alongside play-by-play man Joe Davis in the booth this season. And Olsen would still be involved doing playoff games from the booth this month if Fox had any playoff weekends where it had to do two broadcasts rather than one.
But with the streaming services getting more and more involved in NFL telecasts, Fox only has a single game to produce every postseason weekend in these playoffs. That means Brady and Burkhardt, the No. 1 Fox team,will do the Detroit-Washington game Saturday, and then the NFC championship game on Jan. 26 and then the Super Bowl Feb. 9 for Fox.
I suspect Brady won’t fulfill his entire 10-year, $375-million broadcasting contract with Fox, however. Brady is trying to do what I believe is an unsustainable juggling act at the moment, since he also owns a piece of the Las Vegas Raiders. That means, for instance, on Saturday that Brady will be calling a game in Detroit for Fox and talking about a hot offensive coordinator (former UNC quarterback Ben Johnson) who the Raiders may want to hire as their head coach.
Conflict of interest, anyone?
At some point, maybe as soon as next season, Olsen could ascend to the No. 1 role again for Fox if Brady bows out to take a more publicly active role in trying to rebuild the Raiders. I’m hoping that happens. But for now, we’re not hearing Olsen on the biggest games, and that’s a loss for all NFL fans.
Notes on Darnold, Mayfield and Gonzalez
A few quick notes for the other former Panthers who are or were involved in the NFL playoffs, which are now down to eight teams:
▪ Sam Darnold’s Monday night meltdown cost him a lot of money in free agency. Darnold had a superb first 16 games this year, as Minnesota started 14-2. Darnold played so well he made the Pro Bowl. But then Minnesota got smashed 31-9 in the regular-season finale by Detroit, which dropped the Vikings into the No. 5 playoff spot.
And then Darnold was actually worse Monday night, holding the ball too long (an old bugaboo he had with the Panthers and New York Jets) and getting no help from his offensive line. He looked like he was seeing ghosts again. He ended up getting sacked nine times — one resulted in the dreaded strip-sack-score trifecta — and the L.A. Rams destroyed Minnesota, 27-9.
Darnold will still get a big paycheck somewhere in the next couple of months, because he did revive his career in 2024. But he also lost many millions of dollars with his performance in Minnesota’s two most important games of the season over the past two weeks.
▪ Baker Mayfield played better than Darnold did Sunday (it was Mayfield who beat Darnold out for the Panthers’ starting job for Week 1 of the 2022 season). But Mayfield’s third-seeded Bucs still got beaten at home by No. 6 seed Washington. Mayfield had a critical fourth-quarter fumble during the game. He will return to the Bucs next year, however, and Tampa Bay will still be the team the Panthers must dethrone if they are ever going to win the NFC South.
▪ Washington is the NFC team that sports the most Panthers in key roles. Former Panther kicker Zane Gonzalez banked in the game-winning field goal off the right upright against Tampa Bay. He also was on camera a looooong time before the kick displaying some of the manifestations of his obsessive-compulsive disorder, such as repeatedly fixing his hair, taking on and off his shoe and so on.
I wrote about Gonzalez’s self-described OCD in 2021 when he was with Carolina. During that interview Gonzalez told me of his OCD: “It’s just little thoughts, little funny habits that I do.”
Linebacker Frankie Luvu (a difference-maker whom the Panthers never should have let get away) and safety Jeremy Chinn also start for Washington on defense. Both have made an impact for the Commanders.
Bills are Panthers North — again
No. 2 seed Buffalo is the AFC team with the most former Panthers in significant positions, as it has been for several years under the leadership of head coach Sean McDermott (the former Panthers defensive coordinator) and general manager Brandon Beane (who first made his mark in Carolina’s personnel department).
Wide receiver Curtis Samuel, the former Panther with the sort of breakaway speed the team has missed for years, had a 55-yard touchdown pass from Josh Allen in Buffalo’s first playoff game. Buffalo also starts former Carolina cornerback Rasul Douglas.
▪ You might have missed this one, but former Panther Teddy Bridgewater — Carolina’s starting quarterback in 2020 — could get a Super Bowl ring in Detroit. After coaching a high school team to a state championship in Florida, Bridgewater un-retired and rejoined the Lions as a backup quarterback in late December. He won’t play, of course, unless Jared Goff gets hurt.
▪ Once upon a time, Harrison Butker was the first placekicker the Carolina Panthers drafted, in 2017.
After Carolina waived him and then stashed him on the practice squad, the Kansas City Chiefs signed him and he’s been there ever since. Butker has had a spotty season by his high standards — missing several kicks, and several games with a knee injury — but he has returned and will be kicking all critical field goals for a Kansas City team trying to three-peat.
This story was originally published January 14, 2025 at 12:22 PM.
