KANSAS CITY, Mo. — It’s become an annual tradition on a September Thursday on NBC: the Sunday Night Football team airs the first NFL game of the football season featuring the defending Super Bowl champions.
That tradition continues this Thursday in Kansas City, but it won’t be a typical broadcast.
“The Chiefs, clearly to me, are one of the top three teams going into the season,” said Al Michaels, the voice of NBC’s Sunday Night Football.
He told 41 Action News that this season will feel very different for him, analyst Cris Collinsworth and sideline reporter Michelle Tafoya.
“In terms of how we do the game, Cris and I will be in the booth socially distant. Michelle will be not on the field, but a couple of rows back in the stands in what they call the moat,” Michaels explained.
He's heading into his 35th year calling NFL games, one that will now include routine COVID-19 testing.
“It’s a saliva test, we put it in a test tube, we send it back to some place in Georgia and get clearance to come to the game," Michaels said.
Of the roughly 170 people who normally work an NFL game on NBC at the stadiums, 20 percent will work remotely this year. Television production trucks will look drastically different too.
“We’ve actually had to add a truck so every single person who works in a truck can be socially distanced. Everyone will wear a mask, everyone will be six feet apart,” said Fred Gaudelli, the lead producer of Sunday Night Football.
Gaudelli decides what is seen on TV, and he’ll have the benefit of having some fans in the stands at Arrowhead for the season opener. Other games, he won’t.
“We have to change our camera framings a little bit. We have to try to do our best to not show too many shots of empty seats, but they’re going to be there," he explained.
That begs the question for viewers: what will those games sound like?
“What the NFL has come up with, where NFL Films curated four years worth of natural sound at every stadium, makes it about as authentic as it can be,” Gaudelli explained.
In-game shots will look different too, with NBC adding a new 360-degree camera above the field.
“When you have a dominant interior lineman, we have Chris Jones and JJ Watt on Thursday night, we have Aaron Donald and Zack Martin on Sunday night. You can now get in from that skycam perspective for an intimate look, actually, at the techniques and the nuances by which these guys play,” Gaudelli said, referring to the Chiefs-Texans and Cowboys-Rams games that NBC will broadcast on Thursday and Sunday.
Thursday's game, and every Sunday night to follow, will feel, look, and sound a little different, but NBC’s team is ready for kickoff.
“Once the game starts, we’re back to football. I know a lot of people can’t wait for it to happen, me included,” Michaels said.
The Chiefs and Texans kick off the 2020 season Thursday night at 7:20 p.m., with the game airing on 41 Action News.
