Al Michaels put Trevor Lawrence in the wrong NFL draft by 20 years on Thursday night, and fans spent the rest of the broadcast asking him to leave the booth.
The slip came early in the first quarter of Jacksonville’s Week 9 game at Baltimore, with Lawrence on the field for the Jaguars’ opening drive:
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“Back in 2001, Trevor Lawrence was your number one overall draft pick,” Michaels said on Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football.
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Lawrence was born in October 1999, which made him about a year old when the 2001 draft was held. Jacksonville actually took him No. 1 overall in 2021 out of Clemson, where he won a national championship as a freshman. He finished the night 16 of 26 for 242 yards and a touchdown in a 33-10 Jaguars win at M&T Bank Stadium.
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MLFootball posted the clip on X, and replies piled up within minutes. Michaels turns 82 on Nov. 12, which falls on next week’s Thursday night broadcast, and the complaints were as much about his age and energy as about the wrong year.
Among the reactions online:
“He needs to retire. He’s too old to be calling games frfr,” one fan wrote.
“Al Michaels needs to retire. He’s the worst,” another fan commented.
“He’s cooked, he does this every week. Needs to hang it up already,” one fan mocked.
Another posted, “Al Michaels needs too hang it up omg.”
“Al should have retired 5 years ago. He’s bored,” one fan wrote.
Another fan commented, “He might need to hand up his mic and ride off into the sunset.”
Michaels is working the final year of his Prime Video contract, according to multiple reports, and has kept his future on a year-to-year footing since his original three-year deal expired.
The draft-year slip was not the only booth conversation that traveled. Earlier in the same game, Michaels and Herbstreit had returned to a running argument about fourth-down analytics.
Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit turned a Baltimore fourth down into another analytics debate
The mistake was not the only thing the booth gave viewers to react to. On a Ravens fourth down, Herbstreit said, “Analytics says go,” and Michaels replied, “So if they don’t make it, who do we yell at?”
Analytics has been a running bit between the two men all season. During Green Bay’s 27-19 win over Carolina in Week 8, Herbstreit tied a fourth-down discussion to his partner. “But with the world that you’ve created with analytics…” he said. Michaels answered, “That I’ve created? Get out of town, clown.” Some viewers heard two colleagues teasing each other. Others heard a broadcast team talking down data-driven decisions again.
Michaels built his reputation on precision, from the 1980 Olympic hockey game at Lake Placid to 11 Super Bowls, and he has been candid that the end is near. Asked recently on The Dan Patrick Show how he would know when to stop, he said, “Well, either the people that I work for will tell me, or I’ll know myself, a combination.”
That history is why a wrong draft year lands harder than a hot take about fourth downs. Michaels is working on a year-by-year arrangement at Prime Video, according to Deadline, after his initial three-year contract ended. No change to the booth has been announced, and his next broadcast falls on his 82nd birthday.
Edited by Santosh Kumar
