Joe Buck, Troy Aikman reportedly argued over contract situation before Rams-Bills

Joe Buck and Troy Aikman made it through Monday night’s broadcast without missing a beat, which is more than can reportedly be said for the conversation they had before it. According to Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports , ESPN’s lead NFL duo got into an argument ahead of Rams-Bills at SoFi Stadium, the same building where they’ll call the network’s first Super Bowl in February. A source told FOS that Buck was the one who finally brought up the elephant in the booth, namely that he has a shiny new contract and Aikman doesn’t have an offer. Things cooled down before kickoff, FOS reported, and by the time the cameras were rolling, the two were back to sounding like a pairing that has called games together for a quarter century. ESPN declined to comment to FOS . The elephant arrived in September, when Buck agreed to a six-year extension worth more than $100 million to remain ESPN’s lead NFL voice through the network’s second Super Bowl in 2031. That locked in half of the NFL’s longest-tenured booth, the pairing ESPN poached from Fox in 2022 to end years of instability on Monday Night Football . It also left Aikman, whose contract runs out after this season, as the odd man out, and he didn’t exactly sound thrilled about it when he spoke with Richard Deitsch a few days later. “I thought something would be done prior to the start of this season,” Aikman said . “I’ve never gone into the last year of a contract ever since I signed with the Dallas Cowboys. And so I thought that it would be done. It’s not. When it might get done, if it gets done, is anyone’s guess. And it’s really not something that I’m putting a lot of energy into. Aikman also told Deitsch that his negotiations with ESPN had been put on hold for the time being and that Buck’s extension was “no question” a factor in his decision, though he acknowledged that how much of the outcome rests with him is “yet to be determined.” For all his apparent disappointment that a deal hadn’t been reached before the season, Aikman stopped well short of playing hardball, making a point to say he’d “100%” like to keep working with Buck “moving down the road.” The former Dallas Cowboys signal-caller’s future at the network had been in question well before Buck’s extension, as our Brendon Kleen pointed out in August, when he noted that Aikman, Greg Olsen and Kirk Herbstreit were all entering the final year of their contracts and heading toward free agency just as CBS was weighing Tony Romo’s future after his OWI arrest. Kleen expected Aikman, set to call his seventh Super Bowl, to land another substantial raise after he and Buck restored stability to Monday Night Football , though he questioned whether Aikman might ultimately trade the booth for a management role. Since then, the two biggest analyst jobs outside ESPN, at Amazon and CBS, have become even harder to predict. Amazon re-signed Herbstreit to remain on Thursday Night Football in late September, but the agreement gives Prime Video the flexibility to move on if Rams head coach Sean McVay or another preferred target becomes available. The streamer is also reportedly eyeing CBS’ Ian Eagle as the eventual successor to Al Michaels, with The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand suggesting CBS has little interest in letting Eagle go given his long tenure and his relationship with CBS Sports president David Berson. Olsen, meanwhile, remains on an expiring deal after a run in Fox’s top booth that included a Super Bowl broadcast and an Emmy. With no deal in place, the guessing game over who could eventually take Aikman’s seat has already begun, and it has even reached Pat McAfee. On Tuesday, McAfee took to X to shoot down a Front Office Sports column that framed his Field Pass alternate broadcast of the Super Bowl as a potential tryout alongside Buck, insisting he had heard nothing about replacing Aikman. McCarthy’s argument rested on the possibility that Aikman won’t learn his fate until after the Super Bowl, along with the $19.5 million gap between Aikman’s $18 million annual salary and the $37.5 million Fox pays Tom Brady, a difference he suggested could stall talks between Aikman and ESPN. ESPN also has an in-house option getting reps this season in Jason Kelce, who has been working the network’s international games on NFL Network alongside Dave Pasch and Kurt Warner. Kelce drew strong reviews for his debut on Colts-Commanders, particularly for his work breaking down the line of scrimmage, but his second assignment, the Jaguars’ 19-17 win over the Eagles in London, renewed criticism of his Eagles bias after he once again referred to his former team as “we.” Jeff Dufine, the longtime ESPN producer overseeing those broadcasts, had told The Philadelphia Inquirer before the game that the crew was already working to break Kelce of the habit, while praising how well he sees the game. Vuck and Aikman will return to SoFi Stadium in February to call ESPN’s first Super Bowl, the game their partnership was built to deliver. Whether the conversation Buck started there on Monday reaches a resolution by then, or carries into the biggest broadcast of their ESPN tenure, remains to be seen. The post Joe Buck, Troy Aikman reportedly argued over contract situation before Rams-Bills appeared first on Awful Announcing .