Joe Buck has one wish for his ESPN future amid NFL broadcast reshuffling

Joe Buck spent nearly three decades at FOX before he and Troy Aikman departed to become the voices of ESPN‘s “Monday Night Football” in 2022.

If Buck has any say in the matter, he will spend his remaining decades at ESPN.

“If you reached through my computer screen right now and handed me a contract to continue my time at ESPN, I would sign it without even looking at it,” Buck told Richard Deitsch for the Sports Business Journal. “I’ve loved every second of it, and I am hopeful that I’m at ESPN for the rest of my career.”

Buck continued, “That’s as plain as I can say it and as honest as I can say it, and maybe it’s stupid of me to say. If something gets thrown at me and I have to shift, I’ll shift. But I would be hopeful to stay right where I am until I’m finished.”

Buck’s declaration comes shortly after The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported that ESPN is “expected” to reshuffle its No. 2 NFL broadcast team for the 2026 season. That booth had been comprised of Chris Fowler, Dan Orlovsky, and Louis Riddick Jr.

“As part of a potential new booth, Jason Kelce has emerged as a dark horse candidate on the analyst side, according to sources briefed on discussions, while NFL Network’s Kurt Warner is also in the mix,” Marchand wrote. “Kelce is a studio analyst on ESPN’s ‘Monday Night Countdown.'”

Kelce would join an exhaustive list of former players to enter the broadcast booth. Every play-by-play and analyst pairing from last year included a former player, including Rich Eisen and Warner’s NFL Network booth. (Amazon Prime’s “Thursday Night Football” analyst Kirk Herbstreit still qualifies, although he didn’t reach the NFL after Ohio State.)

Kelce is a future Hall of Fame center for the Philadelphia Eagles from 2011 to 2023, winning a Super Bowl and earning six All-Pro nods. Kelce first exhibited his on-camera charisma with his brother, Kansas City Chiefs star tight end Travis Kelce, on “New Heights.” The wildly popular (and lucrative) podcast launched in 2022.

Given that Kelce has already become a “Monday Night Countdown” fixture and even infiltrated ESPN’s 2026 Masters coverage this week, ESPN featuring him on their “The Year of the Super Bowl” campaign push seems like a natural next step. ESPN will air its first-ever Super Bowl on Feb. 14, 2027.

During the annual league meeting in Phoenix, Arizona, NFL executive vice president of media distribution Hans Schroeder confirmed that ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” double-headers would not continue in the 2026 season. Schroeder’s announcement coincided with NFL Network’s merger with ESPN.

In recent years, ESPN has aired two concurrent Monday night games.

“When we did the deal [with Disney] five years ago, we thought adding two games on Monday night would be a great thing for fans,” Schroeder said. “It was more free football that was sort of outside of a Sunday afternoon. I think we collectively struggled and realized that fans felt that they were conflicted to choose between those games.”

Schroeder is correct. America’s appetite for football seemingly knows no bounds, but less is still more on Monday night.