Welcome to The A Block, Awful Announcing’s daily newsletter where you’ll always find the latest sports media news, commentary, and analysis.

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🎤 QUICK START ✍️

🏈 Announcers explain phantom flag. The climatic play of Sunday’s AFC Championship Game saw Buffalo Bills tight end Dalton Kincaid fail to haul in Josh Allen’s heave on a 4th and 5 with two minutes remaining, effectively punching the Kansas City Chiefs’ ticket to a third straight Super Bowl. Bills fans both watching the game on TV and listening on national radio, however, received a brief glimmer of hope with CBS’ Jim Nantz and Westwood One’s Kevin Harlan each making note of a flag on the play.

But as it turned out, no such flag was thrown and the Chiefs proceeded to run out the clock, keeping their three-peat hopes alive. So what happened? As Nantz explained to Sports Illustrated’s Jimmy Traina, somebody on CBS’ production team thought they saw a flag, resulting in the broadcast putting the accompanying graphic on the scorebug. And that same graphic was the one that Harlan saw and made note of during his own radio call.

Ultimately, the confusion was cleared up to both the TV and radio audiences. What’s one more punch to the gut for Bills fans anyways?

📺️ FanDuel Sports Network has laid off approximately two dozen employees, Awful Announcing confirmed on Monday. The affected positions seemingly indicates a shift away from digital and non-game content for the network.

⭐️ Ex-ESPN star in talks for return. More than five years after taking a buyout to leave ESPN following the demise of his and Jemele Hill’s version of SportsCenter, Michael Smith has had “exploratory talks” with ESPN regarding a potential return, according to Front Office Sports’ Michael McCarthy. Per McCarthy, if Smith does return, it will likely be in a role related to SportsCenter and/or ESPN’s news division.

🚨LEADING OFF 🚨

GOAT Talk

While Fox will broadcast Super Bowl LIX between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Philadelphia Eagles on Feb. 9, it was actually CBS that first set the tone for what would prove to be one of The Big Game’s biggest storylines.

“Everyone knows [Tom] Brady’s still the GOAT right now. He’s trying to make a run at that,” CBS’ Tony Romo said of Patrick Mahomes as the Chiefs were in the midst of a go-ahead drive in the fourth quarter of Sunday’s AFC Championship Game.

And if you read the first section of this newsletter, you already know how the game ended, with Kansas City clinching a trip to New Orleans, where discussion regarding Mahomes’ impending “GOAT” (greatest of all-time) status will only ramp up in the time leading up to next Sunday’s Super Bowl.

Especially so when you consider that Brady, himself, will be on the call for the game in what will mark the final game of his first season as Fox’s lead analyst. While the 47-year-old’s debut campaign in the broadcast booth has been up and down, he’s seemingly hit his stride in the playoffs while providing his unparalleled perspective as the most accomplished quarterback in football history.

Brady’s unique space in the sports media ecosystem will prove especially notable next week, as “what would a Chiefs three-peat mean for Patrick Mahomes’ legacy?” is already one of the predominant storylines for Super Bowl LIX. Seven rings would still be more than what would be Mahomes’ four if Kansas City wins, but a three-peat would be unprecedented and put the Chiefs quarterback just three Lombardi Trophies behind Brady before he even turns 30.

Whether Mahomes actually belongs in the GOAT conversation or not at this point in his career is a story for another day, but the reality is that the storyline’s already here. And it will be interesting to see how Brady addresses it both before, during and potentially after the game, as Mahomes and Jalen Hurts aren’t the only quarterbacks whose legacies will be in the spotlight at the Caesars Superdome next Sunday.

📱 SOCIAL MEDIA POST OF THE DAY 🏆️ 

Livvy Dunne weighs in on the state of NCAA gymnastics 🤸‍♀️ 

🎤 MEDIA MOMENTS ✍️ 

• ESPN NFL analyst Benjamin Solak received plenty of backlash for his social media posts blaming Bills quarterback Josh Allen for not targeting Khalil Shakir on Buffalo’s final offensive play of the AFC title game. Among those to take issue with Solak’s use of freeze frames and animated ESPN Next Gen Stats graphics was Thursday Night Football analyst and former NFL quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick.

• Barstool Sports’ live stream watch-along of the NFC and AFC Championship Games saw Jon Gruden grow increasingly frustrated by the broadcasts’ copious commercials. WFAN’s Gregg Giannotti, however, thinks there may be more to the story, suggesting that the Super Bowl-winning head coach might already be getting tired of his role at the irreverent sports brand.

• After taking the 2024 season off, Pete Carroll is back in the NFL as the new head coach of the Las Vegas Raiders. As such, sports talk radio legend Mike Francesa thought it was important to clarify that he wasn’t responsible for the New York Jets firing the now-73-year-old following his lone season as the team’s head coach in 1994.

🤔 THINKING OUT LOUD 💭 

Sports Media Ratings could use a Steve Kornacki

Last week's lower than anticipated TV rating has led a glut of dissection and analysis into the the CFP schedule and other factors that played into the low rating.

Too regional of a game? A likely blowout? Two teams known for overly exuberant fanbases that casual fans couldn't pick one to root for so they didn't watch? We'll be looking more at the scheduling and have already covered football fatigue as factors but part of me thinks sports media in general is quick to jump to conclusions.

Those with Nielsen access can see a whole lot more of the picture than we can. Potentially things like:

• Viewership in the south likely was down a ton without representation in the final (and no clear team to root for out of spite)

• Viewership on the West Coast down without representation (unlike last year) and perhaps not yet embracing their new Big Ten rooting interests.

• Viewership generally on par with last year's game but then falling dramatically when Ohio State went up 21-7, and continuing for the next two hours until, Notre Dame made a game of it for a few minutes.

The items above likely factored in, as did the schedule, and football fatigue. However, unless a sports media Steve Kornacki emerges to get into the minutiae of the ratings (regional trends, timeline of audience through out the game) we'll all mostly pissing in the dark with ideas while those with Nielsen access have a much clearer picture.

-Awful Announcing’s Ben Koo (@BKoo)

🔥 THE CLOSER 🔥 

Whatever happened to those Deion Sanders-Cowboys rumors?

It was just two weeks ago that sports media was abuzz with reports that the Dallas Cowboys were interested in potentially hiring Deion Sanders as their next head coach.

And yet, not only did Dallas not wind up hiring Coach Prime — opting instead for the underwhelming move to promote offensive coordinator Brian Schottenheimer — but the Cowboys’ pursuit of Sanders never got past the initial reports of their mutual interest.

To quote Tony Soprano, how could this happen?

Here you have two of sports’ most famous entities reportedly interested in a reunion 26 years after the Hall of Famer cornerback last donned professional football’s most famous helmet. And yet, despite the initial reports that fed a week’s worth of newscycles, we never got anything more than Sanders taking a call from Jerry Jones regarding the opening and not ruling out a return to Big D.

Did Jones actually pursue Sanders, only for negotiations to stall out? Or did Dallas ultimately decide that the Colorado head coach’s success in the college ranks wouldn’t translate to the pro level and opt to hire someone with more NFL experience (albeit none as a head coach) instead?

We’ll likely never know the answers to these questions, which is hardly unique to a typical coaching search. But this was far from a standard situation and it is objectively strange that a story that dominated the headlines the way that Dallas’ reported interest in Sanders did just died on the vine without so much as a follow up as to why.

Following Schottenheimer’s introductory press conference on Monday, The Athletic’s Jon Machota posted that one of his takeaways from speaking with Jones was that Sanders was never actually a serious candidate for the role. If that’s the case, then it’s worth wondering why so much of the early reporting suggested otherwise.