NFL Network made public its new announcing team this morning for their Thursday night broadcasts. The color commentator will be Mike Mayock, whose name leaked out as the replacement for Matt Millen last month. The play-by-play announcer will be Brad Nessler, who is best known for his college football announcing. There was some speculation Gus Johnson could get the job, but NFL Network went with Nessler instead.
Mayock is an outstanding choice for this position. His coverage during the NFL Draft is exceptional (he's my favorite draft analyst), and his announcing on Notre Dame games on NBC is good too. I'm not the biggest fan of Tom Hammond, who is NBC's play-by-play announcer for Notre Dame games, but Mayock being paired with Nessler should be great. Nessler does an outstanding job calling college football games and college basketball games for ESPN/ABC, and his new position at NFL Network will not even interfere with that.
Two of the old NFL Network announcers, Bob Papa and Joe Theismann, will continue to work for the channel in other roles. Papa is going to contribute reports to NFL GameDay as he has done in the past and "additional NFL Network programming." Theismann will continue working on "Playbook" and other specials. As for Millen, it appears his relationship with NFL Network is over. Unfortunately, as it stands right now, he is still going to announce college football games and be an analyst on Monday Night Football. At least I won't have a problem tuning in to Thursday night NFL games anymore.