Al Michael has called NFL games for 51 years. The man is a legend who belongs in the same conversation as John Madden and Howard Cosell. He has called some absolutely iconic games in that time, from the Bills-Giants “Wide Right” game of Super Bowl XXV to the unforgettable Malcolm Butler interception against Seattle in Super Bowl XLIX. In all of that time, Michaels has often gotten a good grasp of which games have the best chance to become classics based on matchups, history, and players involved.
He knew, going into the 2025 playoffs, that the game everybody wanted was the rubber match between the Chicago Bears and the Green Bay Packers. It was the oldest rivalry in football. It was Caleb Williams vs. Jordan Love. Ben Johnson vs. Matt Lafleur. The previous two games had gone to heartstopping finishes. It was only the third playoff game between the two teams in history. Michael hadn’t gotten to call anything like it. Sadly, he knew the NFL would never award such a game to Amazon. It was too important. They would almost certainly give to an established TV network.
So you can imagine his reaction when the news came down that he’d get to call the game after all. Michael described the entire sequence on Sports Media with Richard Deitsch.
Al Michael was dumbfounded.
“There was a seminal moment last year in terms of how the league felt about Prime, when there were six Wild Card games at the end of the season, and they didn’t apportion them until the final whistle on Sunday,” he said. “Our whole group gathered, and we said, you know what, they’ll probably give us the third or fourth best game.
“We knew the best game, number one, Green Bay-Chicago, we weren’t going to get it. San Francisco-Philadelphia, doubtful. So we would probably wind up with the— I think Jacksonville played Buffalo, the Rams were playing Carolina. I can’t remember what the other game was, but we were stunned when they gave us Green Bay-Chicago.
“I think I kidded [Fox Sports CEO] Eric Shanks about it, too. I said, ‘You guys were stunned over at Fox.’ He said, ‘We were.’ I said, ‘You can’t do every Green Bay-Chicago game, you know.’ And then we did 32 million people in the game, it was phenomenal.”
Michaels reached into the wayback machine for that game.
He’d been accused of losing his fastball as an announcer over the past couple of years. The same sharp analysis and emotional investment didn’t seem to be there. It can be forgiven. The man is 81 years old. It is difficult to maintain an edge at that age. However, Michaels turned back the clock for that game. He was into it the entire way, reminding everybody how good he is at infusing games with excitement. There is no telling how much longer he’ll be doing this, but if that game is the last great one he ever calls, it will be a hell of a swan song.
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In truth, Al Michaels admitted that part of his regression the past few years was partly due to the schedule of games he was given since moving to Amazon. The NFL saddled the new network with some ugly matchups, and that made it hard to get invested. Mercifully, the league changed things up last season, sending some strong games their way. That Bears-Packers matchup was the icing on the cake. It makes him hopeful that Amazon has proved it belongs as part of the core rotation moving forward.
No doubt he’s hoping for an encore.
The Bears and Packers play in two prominent game slots next season. One will be in the late afternoon, and the other will take place on Christmas Day at noon. The latter seems the likelier of the two options for Amazon to snag, since they primarily air primetime games. After the numbers those teams did in January, you can bet the media giant would jump at the opportunity to get them again. Michaels is no stranger to calling rivalry games over the years. He was right there for the wars between Baltimore and Pittsburgh in the 2000s, along with San Francisco and Seattle in the early 2010s.
This man was there for the entirety of the Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers eras in Green Bay. It seems rather fitting he’d stick around to hopefully see the full ascent of Williams. Either way, that game during the wild card round will go down as one of the greatest in franchise history. Having an all-time great like Michaels call it only makes it 100x better.
