As he’s continuing on in his second season with ESPN as its Monday Night Football play-by-play announcer, Joe Buck poked at his newish employer for its recent employee layoffs.
ESPN cut many notable figures from its broadcast team this past summer, including longtime NFL fixtures like Suzy Kolber and Todd McShay.
Buck and his longtime booth partner Troy Aikman are now two of the network’s more notable NFL broadcasters, and Buck spoke about Monday night’s big milestone with Aikman in an interview with YES Network on Monday.
On Monday night during the Buffalo Bills and New York Jets game broadcast, Buck and Aikman are set to break the record for most consecutive seasons for an NFL broadcasting tandem, a benchmark previously set by John Madden and Pat Summerall.
Well, Buck wasn’t afraid to give his new network a little flak for recently laying off so many employees while discussing he and Aikman’s impressive achievement.
“I think we only break the record if we finish the year. So, we haven’t broken it yet,” Buck said in the interview about the pending record. “It’s ESPN. We could be fired tomorrow.”
"It's ESPN, we could be fired tomorrow," Joe Buck pic.twitter.com/mPuSpntet9
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 11, 2023
Ouch. That’s a heater from Buck, one that ESPN probably doesn’t enjoy hearing on the eve of a historical moment for NFL broadcasting.
However, Buck probably feels pretty safe with his new gig that he can get away with throwing a little shade at the sports entertainment network. If there’s one thing we know, it’s that ESPN can take it.