Steve Wyche voices unease inside NFL Network as ESPN deal looms

Steve Wyche has spent nearly two decades inside the NFL Network.

He broke one of the league’s most consequential stories in 2016, when Colin Kaepernick refused to stand for the National Anthem, and he helped turn the league’s in-house channel into a credible newsroom. But now, as ESPN moves to take control of NFL Network and its assets, Wyche finds himself confronting the question that every veteran in the building is quietly asking: Do they even need us anymore?

“There’s so many intelligent shows at ESPN where I think some of us can prosper,” Wyche told Sports Media Watch’s Derek Futterman. “But I also say that knowing that our careers are now in the hands of people who don’t know us. ESPN might not need me, right? They might say, ‘Our football network’s done just fine without anybody from NFL Network, so when we take over, thank you for whatever, but you can go your merry way.’ And it’s everybody in our building who feels that way.”

Wyche isn’t speaking for everyone, but he’s capturing the mood. NFL Network once mattered. It gave Rich Eisen a second act, turned offseason events into must-watch programming, and built credibility with original reporting.

Today, that all feels like a shadow of what it once was. Cuts and rights shifts have stripped the NFL Network down to its skeleton. Even the veterans who helped define the channel don’t know what comes next. ESPN has the reach, the platforms, the brand muscle, all things NFL Network can’t touch. And for the people who built it, it’s a reminder that nothing they’ve done guarantees them a seat at the table. Reputation only takes you so far when the rules of the game change overnight.

Steve Wyche sees the upside in the megadeal, though. He points to how the Hall of Fame “door knocks” could evolve if ESPN applies its production resources.

“The best assignment I get every year is I get to go do the door knocks for the Pro Football Hall of Fame,” Wyche said. “We run like an hour show of that, but with the brilliance of what ESPN has done with their E:60 programming, or 30 for 30, or some of their specials, they can turn that into something. Instead of an hour-long show, this can be something that starts out as an hour-long show but then has legs to it to evolve on some of their other platforms, whether it’s their direct-to-consumer, whether it’s the variety of their linear channels.”

But even though there’s a silver lining, the deal casts a shadow, too.

Every desk in the building is on notice. The people who helped build NFL Network now have to prove they belong in a system that didn’t exist when they started. But if anyone knows the stakes, it’s Wyche. Covering the very employer that signs your paycheck while still calling out its mistakes isn’t easy, but he’s done it, whether it’s on diversity, Deflategate, or Bountygate.

“When I first took the job, that was a tough thing for me to get over,” he told Futterman. “Like, ‘Oh man, I’m going to be covering the employer that signs my paycheck,’ and the good thing for me is very much early in the process, I was told that the NFL believed if there was breaking news, it’s going to get reported, so why not report it on the NFL Network or NFL.com.

“I have been incredibly critical of the NFL for its hiring practices, for the lack of diversity, for the way it handled some of the Deflategate stuff, for the way it handled some of the Bountygate stuff, but I think because I used the means to justify the criticism, all they could say is, ‘Well, okay. It’s fair. You laid it out there.'”

NFL Network built careers and broke stories. It became the place to be for anyone chasing the inside lane on football. Now, as it becomes part of a larger machine, people like Steve Wyche, who laid it all out there, are left wondering if laying it out will still be enough.