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Five Great NFL Announcing Moments From Week 5

The best television moments from a packed NFL weekend.

Liam McKeone

Kevin Harlan hand a great call of Lamar Jackson's cool play against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday.
Kevin Harlan hand a great call of Lamar Jackson's cool play against the Cincinnati Bengals on Sunday. / @CBS

There's nothing like the NFL. And there's especially nothing like the NFL when something exciting happens. The best broadcasters in the world are tasked with bringing America's new favorite pastime to life. Usually they go viral for flubbing something. But more often than not they do great work as well.

Let's celebrate that instead with a few awesome moments from Week 5.

Kevin Harlan makes great moments greater ...

Viewers should thank the football gods Kevin Harlan was on the call for Sunday's affair between the Baltimore Ravens and Cincinnati Bengals. It was the wildest game of the weekend, ending in a 41-38 overtime win for the Ravens, and Harlan shines like few other broadcasters in history when he gets to dictate a slugfest featuring lots of scoring.

To that end, Harlan may have delivered one of his best calls ever on Lamar Jackson's absolutely insane touchdown throw to pull within three of the Bengals. You can almost hear the moment Harlan shifts into total read-and-react mode with anticipation tinging every word after Jackson fumbled the snap and slipped. It perfectly matched the energy of all the viewers who leaned forward in their seats like that one meme. The fact that he slipped in a few awesome analogies is just the cherry on top.

It's not as common as you'd think for the quality of call to match the quality of play. For the most part, for plays like Jackson's, viewers just hope the announcer doesn't take away from how awesome the athlete is. In Harlan's case, he not only adds to the moment but emphasizes it.

... And the bad moments, too

As fun as it is to listen to Harlan when the play is excellent, it may be more fun to listen to him when things get sloppy on the field of play. He can make even the most absurd sequence sound like the greatest thing he's ever seen. Case in point: this terrible fumble by the Ravens (Jackson really had the butterfingers yesterday) is the most important play Harlan has ever called based on his energy and tone.

It is the job of any play-by-play man to bring the same energy to the best plays as they do to the worst ones. But there isn't anyone in the business better at that specific trait than Harlan.

Tony Romo keeps it simple

With Tom Brady operating across the way for FOX this year Tony Romo is no longer the shiny object of broadcasting and there hasn't been a ton of buzz about his performances this year. He did have a good day on Sunday, though, presiding over another good Rams-Packers game that featured some stellar quarterback play and some... not-so-stellar decision-making from Jordan Love.

In both instances, Romo kept it short and sweet. When Love dropped a dime to Jayden Reed that traveled 60 yards in the air, Romo said that's a good throw.

When Love made the horrendous decision to avoid a safety by throwing an off-balance pick-six, Romo stated: that's bad.

The audience has come to expect much from Romo after his early days suggested he was omniscient before the snap. Here, though, not much more was required and he kept it simple.

Jason Garrett states the obvious

One can quibble if this is actually an announcing moment but c'mon, expand your horizons. NBC Sports' Football Night in America crew was pressed into extended duty when the Cowboys-Steelers game was delayed by lightning in the area. So the conversations got longer an invariably spun in the direction of Deshaun Watson, who is an abject disaster for the Cleveland Browns. No one denies this! But at the same time not enough pundits have been stating the obvious and imploring the Browns to cut expensive bait and try to save anything worth saving with Jameis Winston.

Garrett has been a bit of a punching bag for the public during his broadcasting career but he absolutely nailed this and probably deserves a second look. He's far more suited to the studio than the booth and segments like this are a good reminder of that.

Rich Eisen gets in on it

The NFL is going to continue with the London games until morale improves or they finally get several teams over in Europe, whichever comes first. One cool part about the morning football being on NFL Network is that Rich Eisen gets a cameo spot for play-by-play duties. And since we don't hear him all that much it's always fun to refamiliarize one's self with his game.

He got an early chance to narrate something spectacular as Andrew Van Ginkle took Aaron Rodgers to the house early to basically move the Vikings to 5-0. There's something fun about not knowing for sure how a broadcaster is going to approach something but Eisen's call was solid and excited and ticked through everything a viewer would need to know.

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Liam McKeone
LIAM MCKEONE

Liam McKeone is a senior writer for the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. He has been in the industry as a content creator since 2017, and prior to joining SI in May 2024, McKeone worked for NBC Sports Boston and The Big Lead. In addition to his work as a writer, he has hosted the Press Pass Podcast covering sports media and The Big Stream covering pop culture. A graduate of Fordham University, he is always up for a good debate and enjoys loudly arguing about sports, rap music, books and video games. McKeone has been a member of the National Sports Media Association since 2020.

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