Noah Eagle considers himself a “very good sleeper,” able to wind down pretty quickly after calling a late-night sporting event – not uncommon given he's a play-by-play announcer for multiple sports.
But after his “Sunday Night Football” call on NBC, of the game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Chicago Bears on Nov. 8 in place of the ill Mike Tirico, Eagle could not find the REM cycle. The whirlwind 36 hours he’d just experienced, calling the Notre Dame-Miami matchup in South Bend, Indiana, on Saturday before announcing “SNF” on short notice, had left him energized rather than exhausted.
“I clearly had some sort of adrenaline,” Eagle told USA TODAY Sports by phone Nov. 11, “and I didn’t get a ton of sleep that night.”
Maybe it was the number
of people Eagle had spent the weekend with – 21.5 million viewers on "SNF" (most-watched Week 9 since 2019) and 9.1 million viewers the night before (the third-biggest number for a Notre Dame prime-time game since the Fighting Irish's relationship with NBC began in 1991).
Eagle eventually returned to his New York apartment for less than 24 hours before a car whisked him to Philadelphia, where he stood in for Tirico again, this time on the NBA as the Sixers hosted the Boston Celtics in their first matchup since Jaylen Brown was traded from Boston to Philadelphia this offseason.
Eagle first heard that his number might be called for “SNF” on Friday, but was told it wasn’t likely. When Tirico’s condition – still unknown, although it is considered minor and he is expected back on the microphone for his 300th NFL game Nov. 15 (the Cincinnati Bengals-Pittsburgh Steelers matchup) – did not improve by late Saturday morning, Eagle found out that it was go time. But about eight hours remained before the Irish and Hurricanes kicked off, and Eagle knew he couldn’t shift his priorities.
“Just focused on the task at hand at that point, which was Notre Dame-Miami and this incredible matchup that we had Saturday night,” Eagle said.
Tirico sent Eagle his notes for the matchup, which was a good starting point, Eagle said. Eagle reached out to the company that puts together his broadcast boards during the season, and they quickly turned around something he could use. Josh Zaleznik, Eagle’s stats guy at NBC, went to a nearby FedEx to have that printed out.
Eagle's next assignment was in the back of his mind as he went to Notre Dame Stadium, but he said that once NBC went on air an hour before kickoff, it was not difficult to stay focused. The scene and stakes deepened his entrenchment.
“Once that game ended,” Eagle said, “then all those thoughts (of "SNF") went right back into my mind,”
Eagle hopped in a car and drove two hours from South Bend to Chicago (and gained an hour back thanks to traveling into Central Time). He arrived at the hotel a little after midnight local time and tried to get to sleep as quickly as possible since there was a 9 a.m. production meeting the next morning with the “SNF” crew. Zaleznik, the stats consigliere, and Eagle's spotter, Tyler Fried, made the drive from South Bend that morning in time for the meetings.
“SNF” producer Rob Hyland and director Drew Esocoff start with the editorial meeting, in which sideline reporter Melissa Stark and color commentator Cris Collinsworth discuss the storylines they want to address during the broadcast. That was “incredibly valuable” to Eagle, he said, because Collinsworth goes into a deep dive on both teams’ tendencies, strengths and weaknesses and the matchups he wants to highlight.
“So for me, it was great to just take some notes down on what his brain was seeing entering a game like that,” Eagle said.
Once the graphics meeting ended, Eagle returned to his hotel room for the rest of the morning and afternoon to cram as much game preparation as he could. He took his shower, changed and left for the stadium.
On a normal weekend, Eagle travels home from his Saturday assignment and collapses onto the couch for NFL Sunday like the rest of America. That meant his preparation didn’t start from scratch, especially compared to studying for a college team that has 100 players on the roster, duplicate numbers and dozens of transfers in either direction.
“That part was ‘OK, how can I now have the next step of that? What have they done this year? What are some of the moments that have happened?’” Eagle said of his preparation. “Because that’s really what you prepare for these types of games, is making sure that you’ve known everything through this season of these guys.”
There is a rule Eagle abides by, learned from his father, CBS/Amazon broadcaster Ian Eagle.
“There’s a baseline of preparation,” Noah Eagle said, “if you can get to that, you feel comfortable at least calling the game. And then there’s levels higher.”
Eagle felt close enough to the baseline – at least enough to follow Collinsworth, Stark and the truck. Collinsworth’s congeniality helped Eagle loosen up and gave him a sense of security. Collinsworth was clear during their pre-game chat that the broadcast should be a conversation between the two of them.
“It was awesome. He made my life really easy, all things considered,” Eagle said. “He just has this joy about being at games. Like you can tell, he loves football, he loves the NFL, he loves the little moments in the games. All of those laughs and things you hear on air, that’s real and genuine.”
The most challenging aspect of the last-minute assignment was not having the production meeting with coaches and key players to rely upon as he normally does. But Collinsworth, Stark and the crew were there and filled him in on what he needed to know. That helped make the talking points they hit during the broadcast feel normal, Eagle said.
All the people behind the scenes who made sure he was comfortable all weekend helped him pull off the impressive back-to-back.
“It was really cool, just the level of support I felt through it all,” Eagle said.
“I feel like making sure that they get the proper love, too – because it wouldn’t have been close to coming off as seamless as it did without them.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Inside Noah Eagle's NBC whirlwind, from Notre Dame-Miami to filling in for Mike Tirico
