Kevin Burkhardt is hardly a rookie broadcaster — he just finished his 11th season as an NFL play-by-play announcer for Fox — but he is in his first year on his network’s No. 1 crew.
You never would have known that by listening to Sunday night’s Super Bowl telecast on Fox.
The network lost its perennial No. 1 team of Joe Buck and Troy Aikman to ESPN in the offseason and elevated Burkhardt and equally unproven analyst Greg Olsen to its premier telecasts.
Burkhardt validated that you don’t need a marquee name to call the biggest game in sports.
In the Kansas City Chiefs’ come-from-behind and controversial 38-35 victory over the Philadelphia Eagles, Burkhardt was spot on with all the key calls. He kept viewers abreast in an understated way, saving his voice inflection for the game’s biggest moments.
Olsen, who is merely keeping Fox’s No. 1 analyst chair warm for Tom Brady beginning in the 2024 season, was solid if not spectacular. He seemed to talk slightly less than he did on regular-season games, which is a good thing, but still needs to work on completing sentences.
Both were on target on the game’s biggest play, a questionable third-down defensive holding call against the Eagles’ James Bradberry, allowing the Chiefs essentially to run out the clock.
“That is a game-altering penalty,” Olsen said.
“That’s a tough way to finish what’s been a classic,” Burkhardt added.
Olsen even got into a mini-debate with Fox rules analyst Mike Pereira over the call.
“I don’t know, Mike,” Olsen said. “Listen, I think on this stage, I think you let them play.”
“You’ve got to see the whole thing,” Pereira replied. “It seemed to me at the initial break, he grabbed the back of the jersey and pulled it. If we see that, I think that is a…
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