Kirk Herbstreit has agreed to extend his deal with Amazon Prime Video for Thursday Night Football. The move keeps him in the booth while Amazon preserves a path to chase Sean McVay later.
Andrew Marchand on the deal
The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand said the agreement gives Amazon “flexibility” to get out of the deal if one of its top targets becomes available in the future, “if one of its top targets, like Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay, becomes available.” That is a narrow but useful bit of leverage for a broadcaster that has already shown it can spend heavily when it wants a headliner.
Marchand has also reported that Amazon was prepared to offer McVay up to $100 million over five years. That figure sits in a market where Fox pays Tom Brady $37.5 million a year and pays Troy Aikman $18 million per season for Monday Night Football, with Aikman in the final year of his current deal.
Sean McVay and the Rams
McVay’s name keeps surfacing because his profile has already crossed between coaching and broadcasting. After the Los Angeles Rams won Super Bowl 56 in February 2021, reports said he could have received more than $15 million annually if he ever chose television, and the Rams later announced in January 2023 that he was returning as head coach.
That return mattered because McVay had just come through the 2022 campaign, when the Rams finished 5-12 and he said on the Bussin with the Boys podcast that he felt like “a fraud.” He also said, “The reality is, I would have been quitting because I couldn't handle the losing. It was almost like a scarlet letter.”
Amazon’s future opening
As of September 2025, McVay was believed to be making $15 million annually from the Rams, a number that keeps him in a different compensation lane from the top end of broadcast salaries and explains why Amazon’s flexibility clause matters. If he ever becomes available, the company does not need to rebuild its Thursday Night Football on-air structure from scratch; it can decide whether Herbstreit stays central or whether the bigger swing is worth taking.
For now, the practical answer is simple: Herbstreit remains the current voice, and Amazon has kept the option to pivot if McVay ever steps off the sideline. The unresolved piece is the length and exact structure of Herbstreit’s extension, which is the part that will tell you how long Amazon intends to keep this door open.
