NFL

How ESPN’s ‘NFL Live’ caught lightning in a bottle

By
Ryan Glasspiegel
Published Feb. 10, 2023
Updated Feb. 10, 2023, 1:09 p.m. ET

SCOTTSDALE — It’s 75 degrees with the desert sun beaming down directly on the “NFL Live” crew here, and they’re running around on the asphalt.

They are in the Old Town section of the city, where ESPN has commandeered a block and set up a stage for Super Bowl 2023 week. A horde of spectators is watching Dan Orlovsky quarterback a live film study about how Jalen Hurts engineers the Eagles offense, in perpetual motion with Laura Rutledge, Mina Kimes, Marcus Spears and Ryan Clark.

The high-energy segment is a microcosm of the show: A precise mix of information and entertainment, which is difficult to accomplish. It comes together with a group that has grown its chemistry on and off the set, so much so that they refer to each other as family.

“I honestly don’t think you get what you get on TV without us being close to each other,” Spears told The Post. “We ride together. We laugh together. We listen to each others’ music. We have tough conversations, culturally.

“When you work for a company, they often want to put together these lame-ass dinners where you hang out. But we just hung out on our own, on the road or in Bristol. We go to each others’ houses and invite each other over for dinner.”

In baseball, there’s an adage about not wanting a team that takes 25 separate cabs after the game, under the theory that if they gel outside the clubhouse it will permeate onto the field. “NFL Live” embodies that and then some.

“To us, it’s fascinating that it’s rare that we are like family,” Spears said. “They text me when my daughter has volleyball tournaments. We can’t wait to share kids’ accomplishments. Dan [Orlovsky]’s family is here today. I pick his daughter up when I go to their house. His wife cooks for me. I call his sons my nephews.

“I’ve been working with Laura since SEC Network in 2014. I was there when she was pregnant with Reese. That’s my niece. She’s about to have my nephew now [Rutledge is six months’ pregnant and expecting a boy]. Ryan Clark and I go back to college at LSU. He’s my brother. It goes beyond friendship.”

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None of this was inevitable. In 2020, ESPN totally revamped “NFL Live,” restarting it from scratch with Rutledge, Spears, Orlovsky and Kimes. Clark eventually became a fifth regular panelist, which Rutledge said the group pushed hard for in valuing his passion not only as a former player, but having the perspective of a father of a current football player. Keyshawn Johnson also features regularly as an analyst.

The lead producers on the show are Mark Eiseman and Susan Smith; it is also overseen by Seth Markman, the ESPN VP of production who is in charge of all the network’s college football and NFL studio programming. Finally, up the chain, Lee Fitting, ESPN’s senior vice president, who is in charge of NFL and college football game production and studio programming, has also been credited as having a major role in the revamp.

“They’ve found the right balance of talking football and injecting fun,” Fitting said. “That is hard to do. It’s very easy to upset that balance in a hurry. It could get too ‘hardcore football,’ or too silly. To strike that balance is a really hard thing to do on live TV.”

Lydelle King, the coordinating producer of “NFL Live” who has worked at ESPN in various production roles for over 20 years, finds himself feeling like a member of the audience.

“I would say when you find some chemistry, there are times as a producer where you slip into viewership,” he said. “You start watching, and the dialog, conversation, energy, humor and tone of what the analysts are doing draws you in – when we put this crew together, I think there was a hope that they would have this sort of organic chemistry. What we landed on has been explosive. It’s been something we wish we could bottle up and drop into different spaces within our own workplace.”

The program has dabbled in segments that conventional wisdom previously suggested the audience would reject. While ESPN has done film study segments with Ron Jaworski in the past and airs a program wholly devoted to it in “NFL Matchup,” there was a belief that making these spots too long on daily TV would be too dry for the standard viewer to absorb.

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Now, Orlovsky’s mastery of the telestrator can eat up enough minutes that they are an eternity in TV time.

At first, there was pressure on Orlovsky to get in and out of these spots at a faster pace.

“We would push his pace a little bit, telling him to make it a little bit quicker so people would stay engaged,” Rutledge said. “We live in a world where if it goes any longer than a couple minutes, people are out of it, but now he comes on the screen and people pay attention and he can stretch things out a little longer. That’s been a product of him developing that credibility and the trust of the fans that are watching from home.”

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King, the coordinating producer, noted that Orlovsky doesn’t have an off-switch.

“The man doesn’t turn it off. He’s constantly watching film,” he said. “He was on a cross-country flight Monday morning. My guess is the person next to him got annoyed because he’s taking notes and opening up his iPad and computer to watch film. He’s passionate about it.”

One segment in October, where the crew broke down a chess match between offense and defense with regards to play action passing, garnered over 2.7 million views on Twitter.

Another aspect of the show’s chemistry involves the group chats, which Rutledge said fire back-and-forth “all day.”

“We actually have two — we have our serious one that includes producer Mark Eiseman, and then we have our separate family chat that goes throughout the day,” she said. “Eiseman is part of our family, but sometimes things will end up in the serious chat that are meant for the other one. It’s constant. It’s all day long. Most of it is football. The other day, in Vegas for the Pro Bowl, we had a dinner. All the talk was about football. At one point we were like, ‘Maybe we should talk about life…’ and it was like, ‘No, I think we’ll just talk football.'”

Chemistry is a dragon chased endlessly by TV executives, but impossible to totally predict before a talk show has had time to find its groove. The hope is for something like a club sandwich where several ingredients blend together deliciously, as opposed to winding up with peanut butter and tuna fish on sun-dried tomato bread.

https://twitter.com/danorlovsky7/status/1577665506550718464

“NFL Live” took a wildly disparate group of people and made it work seamlessly. Rutledge is a former Miss Florida who was a sideline reporter for the Rays and Padres before reaching SEC Network. Spears played defensive end for nine years, eight of which were for the Cowboys. Orlovsky was a longtime backup NFL quarterback. Clark was a Pro Bowler and Super Bowl-winning defensive back who primarily played with the Steelers. Kimes graduated from Yale and covered business for Fortune and Bloomberg before reaching ESPN. Johnson was a star wideout. The show also splices in reporters, including Adam Schefter, Dianna Russini, Jeff Darlington and Field Yates.

It is rare for anyone, man or woman, who was not a pro athlete to be tapped as an analyst on a single sport-specific show on a league rights-holder. Hosts and reporters are featured on the shows, but they delve into the “what” as opposed to the “why.” The coveted analyst job happened with Bill Simmons on “NBA Countdown” and Colin Cowherd on “Fox NFL Kickoff” for stretches, and Matthew Berry brings fantasy football analysis to NBC’s “Football Night in America,” but the instances are few and far between.

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Kimes has accomplished that for the past several seasons on “NFL Live.” There have been murmurs in sports media circles about whether a team front office will try to poach her out of media.

“There are various front offices that would love to hire her. The question is if she would want to do it,” Rutledge said. “She has such a wide range of skillsets and perspective that she brings to the table. She truly loves being on TV, and doing this show, and podcasting, and writing — she’s one of the best writers I’ve been around; we don’t see that as much now because what she does now is more front-facing — but I think people would love to hire her. That may come to the front of what she decides to do, but I think right now she’s really enjoying where she is.”

Spears has the rare type of magnetism where viewers feel like they are friends with him through the screen. 

“Marcus is very aware of himself,” King, the coordinating producer, said. “Even when you talk about who he is in front of the screen, it’s exactly what he’s like behind the screen. There’s a thin line between being a caricature and a character. Marcus is a character. He is fun-loving. He’s the big brother in the room. He’ll give you tough love when you need it. He’ll hug you when you need it too. This is a guy who grew up in a hardscrabble sort of setting, and just decided a long time ago that he was going to have fun in his life. When he walks into the room he’s physically a big presence, and his personality is a big presence as well. He has that gravitational pull as the center of this group we have.” 

Rutledge, in many ways, brings it all together. She is the point guard of the show on the air. Fitting, the ESPN executive who has been instrumental in the longevity of “College GameDay,” compared her to some of the legendary hosts in network history.

“She’s such a tremendous talent and she’s perfect for the show. It’s more than just distributing the ball,” Fitting said. “She offers her own insight, knowledge and context. That’s what makes a great host. Not just a point guard where you’re giving up the ball constantly. When you look at Chris Fowler, Rece Davis, Mike Tirico and all the great studio hosts, they offer their own insights and judgment. Most importantly, their own context in and out of the analyst comments. She’s great at all of that.”

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As The Post’s Andrew Marchand wrote earlier this week, Kimes and Spears will be sought-after free agents, so it remains to be seen if the full “NFL Live” cast will return next season. For the time being, though, everybody involved has immense pride in how it has blossomed.

“We know that people can get NFL content in a bunch of other places,” said King, the coordinating producer. “Our goal is to give you something that will bring you back. We want to earn your hour.”

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