Maria Taylor has officially been named Mike Tirico’s replacement to host Football Night in America on NBC.
The former ESPN anchor joined NBC last summer after Taylor and her previous network couldn’t reach an agreement on a contract. Taylor was then introduced as a co-host of Football Night in America with Tirico, Tony Dungy and Drew Brees. Typically, she would host the show when Tirico was working as the play-by-play announcer for Sunday Night Football.
Now that Tirico is the full-time play-by-play announcer on Sunday nights following Al Michaels’s move to Amazon Prime, Taylor earned the promotion.
“Maria is the perfect choice to carry the legacy forward of anchoring the most-watched studio show in sports,” NBC Sports Executive Producer Sam Flood said, via NBC’s press release.
Football Night in America airs every week on NBC before the Sunday Night Football game. There is also a halftime segment. Dungy and Brees are expected to continue working on the show with Taylor.
Taylor’s built quite the NBC resume since beginning last July at the network. So far, she’s appeared on the channel’s shows for the Tokyo Olympics, Beijing Olympics, Paralympics and the Super Bowl LVI Pregame Show. At ESPN, she previously hosted the NBA Finals and NFL draft shows.
On top of her hosting responsibilities, Taylor is currently working on an eight-part documentary series on the history of the Black quarterback in the NFL for NBC’s streaming service, Peacock. She is executive producing the project.
