Prepare yourself for Donovan McNabb broadcasting NFL games this fall

Share this image:

Donovan McNabb (Jayne Kamin-Oncea/USA TODAY Sports)

If you’ve ever watched an NFL broadcast and thought the booth should feature more talking, self-references and confusion about overtime rules, the news that Donovan McNabb will call some games for Fox this fall will greatly please you. For everyone else, get your mute button ready.

It’s not that McNabb’s a bad talker, it’s that he’s proved incapable of speaking in television-appropriate soundbites during his brief time on TV and was never very good at explaining his play or knowing the rules during his career. Every sentence becomes a paragraph. Most of those paragraphs somehow reference his playing career. Many of those references involve a plea to “check the numbers.” It’s the sort of stuff that won’t play well in an NFL booth, where too many analysts rely on talking points rather than analyzing the game at hand. Call it Dan Dierdorf syndrome.

Here’s McNabb during a recent segment on Fox Sports 1. In 30 seconds, he uses platitudes and cliches, then quickly brings the discussion back to his favorite topic.

These things could be fixable. No one is John Madden out of the gate. Cris Collinsworth was too wordy and bland when he started in the Fox booth. Now he’s the best color commentator on television. Desmond Howard made fast improvements at College Gameday. It takes times for anyone to learn how to become a good analyst. McNabb might not get that time, however.

In an interesting twist, Fox announced that the spot next to Stockton will rotate between McNabb, Brady Quinn and Kirk Morrison. It’s an idea that sounds compelling on the surface. Heck, it could be its own reality TV show. Instead of hoping one analyst becomes good, Fox throws three against the wall to see who sticks. But how are McNabb, Quinn or Morrison supposed to improve if they’re only doing one game every three weeks? Practice doesn’t make perfect in the broadcast booth. Only real game day experience does.

Share this image:

Brady Quinn preps for an in-studio exercise at the NFL’s Broadcast Bootcamp in June.
(Eileen Blass, USA TODAY Sports)