Tony Dungy is out at NBC after 17 years

NFL teams aren’t alone in making roster moves this week.

NBC is making changes to Football Night in America, its Sunday Night Football pregame show, which includes saying goodbye to Hall of Fame head coach Tony Dungy.

“It’s disappointing news but I want to thank my NBC family for making the last 17 years so special,” Dungy wrote on social media Thursday morning. “I’ll have lasting memories of my time there, especially with Rodney Harrison who has become a tremendous friend.”

In addition to co-hosting the studio show, mostly alongside former New England Patriots defender Rodney Harrison, Dungy also called a few Sunday Night Football games as a color analyst, including a 2023 playoff game alongside current Amazon announcer Al Michaels.

Prior to his second career on TV, Dungy spent 13 seasons as head coach of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts, ultimately winning the Super Bowl with the Colts and Peyton Manning in 2006.

Closer to Philadelphia, he played a major role in getting Michael Vick back into the NFL, where he ultimately landed with the Eagles.

Dungy almost passed on NBC in 2009 when former chairman Dick Ebersol offered him the chance to replace then-pregame analyst Cris Collinsworth, who was moving to the booth.

“I didn’t have a radio show, I didn’t do a coach’s show, it just wasn’t me,” Dungy told The Inquirer in 2023. “My wife said, ‘You know, you ought to investigate it because if you stop [working] cold turkey, you’ll miss it.’ She was right.”

The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand was first to report on Dungy’s “likely” departure from Football Night in America, which he wrote is “anticipated to be a new-look show.”

Several of the show’s personalities — including Devin McCourty, Jason Garrett, Chris Simms, and Rodney Harrison — had their contracts expire after the Super Bowl. Garrett interviewed for the Tennessee Titans’ vacant head coaching job, which ultimately went to Robert Saleh.

Who NBC might add to a revamped show is unclear. One name constantly mentioned in sports media circles is former Pittsburgh Steelers head coach Mike Tomlin, but he hasn’t said if he plans to head straight into a TV role.

In a never-ending quest to add national broadcast windows, the NFL is considering holding a Wednesday night game the day before Thanksgiving, according to ESPN’s Adam Schefter.

The league began playing games on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving, in 2023, and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said in December that could expand to two games.

If the NFL expands to the day before Thanksgiving, there would be seven days of games during a nine-day stretch around the holidays.

“Every offseason we look for new opportunities to best serve our fans in the schedule-making process … looking for additional opportunities tied to this special holiday is exciting for us to explore,” an NFL spokesperson said in a statement.

It will require some maneuvering. For it’s Wednesday Christmas games, the NFL scheduled teams that had placed on Saturday the week before, giving an extra day of rest. But in November, the league is barred from scheduling games on Saturday due to antitrust regulations intended to protect high school and college football.

As a result, if the league moves forward with a pre-Thanksgiving game, it would look to schedule teams coming off their bye week, according to Sports Business Journal’s Austin Karp.

“That would essentially eliminate the full-blown bye experience for those teams, giving them a mini-bye on the front end and a mini-bye on the back end,” wrote NBC analyst Mike Florio.

The move comes as the league is trying to build a package of games appealing to a streaming service, such as YouTube or Netflix. As of now, the league has four games it is selling that were part of its deal to take a 10% ownership stake in ESPN.

The league also has a game in Australia to sell. That game will take place in Week 1, and could kick off the 2026 season on Wednesday, Sept. 9.