Last month there was some speculation that Monday Night Football announcer Mike Tirico was a possibility for the play-by-play job for Detroit Lions preseason games. With the preseason games moving from CBS Detroit to WXYZ, the thinking was Tirico could announce the three games on the network and help upgrade the broadcast even more than it is already expected to be.
Unfortunately, Tirico won't be the play-by-play announcer. In fact, the announcing crew is exactly the same as it was on CBS Detroit. From Tom Leyden:
#Lions preseason games on WXYZ - Matt Shepard play-by-play, Rob Rubick color, @TomLeyden on the sidelinesless than a minute ago via TweetDeck 
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Tom Leyden
TomLeyden
The announcing was one of the many issues I had with CBS Detroit's coverage of Lions preseason games last season. Perhaps I was spoiled by the one year when Gus Johnson was the play-by-play guy, but I think WXYZ could do a little better than the same announcing team from last year. Regardless, hopefully the announcing was more of a symptom of CBS Detroit's overall bad coverage than anything else and it won't be an issue this year on WXYZ.