Steve Levy’s name is back in the ESPN NFL booth conversation.
On his Marchand Sports Media podcast, The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand floated Levy as a candidate for the second booth, which is expected to open up under the new NFL deal, saying he gives the network something worth considering even if he falls short of the classic play-by-play mold.
“I think Steve Levy has an outside chance,” Marchand said. “I think he’s somebody you got to put on the list… [Dave] Pasch has the inside track when you talk about classic play-by-players for that NFL job. And then Levy is a guy who I do think there are people at ESPN who felt did him wrong when they replaced him with Fowler on that second team after Levy was on the No. 1 team.”
When ESPN replaced him with Chris Fowler on the No. 2 MNF team two seasons ago, Levy was candid about how much harder that demotion hit than losing the No. 1 job to Joe Buck. Losing to Buck made sense to him. Levy understood the pecking order — “Joe Buck is Joe Buck, and I get that” — but getting bumped for a contemporary was a different thing. We wrote at the time that Levy deserved better: that a broadcaster who had been at ESPN since 1993 and had handled every demotion with more grace than the network warranted kept getting pushed aside.
Marchand now says there are people at ESPN who feel the same way.
“Levy is a guy who is one of the great hosts in ESPN’s history,” Marchand continued. “He’s an okay play-by-player. Is he a Monday Night Football play-by-player? I would probably say no, but very good personality. Could he mesh with [Jason] Kelce? Doesn’t seem impossible, but that’ll be interesting to see.”
Dave Pasch remains the frontrunner on the play-by-play side, with Mike Monaco and Bob Wischusen also in the mix, per Marchand’s previous reporting for The Athletic. On the analyst side, Jason Kelce has emerged as a dark horse candidate, and Kurt Warner is also being considered. Whether Levy fits alongside Kelce specifically is the open question Marchand raised — and did not answer definitively — but the fact that his name is in the conversation at all suggests the ESPN people who felt he was wronged have not forgotten about it.