Sunday Night Football Producer: No Need To "Glorify" Big Hits Anymore

The producer of the NFL's flagship broadcast, NBC's Sunday Night Football, said he's getting super-cautious about showing repeated replays of rough hits, especially those of the helmet-to-helmet variety.

Appearing on Slate's Hang Up and Listen podcast, SNF's producer Fred Gaudelli—the brains behind the best broadcast in the NFL—cited one "gruesome" hit during Sunday night's Giants-Cowboys game. In the past, Gaudelli said, he would have shown a replay at real speed to demonstrate the "true violence of it." Not anymore.

"We did have one gruesome shot where two Giants went to tackle Terrance Williams and Terrance Williams ducked his head and then the two Giants hit helmet to helmet," Gaudelli said. "Prince Amukamara suffered a concussion. I mean it was gruesome.

"I think I showed two or three replays and there was a time I would have shown it at real speed so you got the true violence of it," he continued. "But after I saw the first or second angle, I was like, you know what, I think I've shown enough here. There's nothing to glorify about this. We showed that one last angle and that was it."

Gaudelli compared it to "replaying a car accident five times. I mean, how many times you really wanna replay it?"

He added:

Five years ago, I would have done it. [...] Look, there are times, certainly in my 25 years in doing this, you've seen players really not know where they are. While that was kind of funny 15 or 20 years ago because that was just part of the deal—oh he got dinged, oh yeah, he was out for a couple of plays but he knows where he is now—we know that's not funny anymore. It's not really anything you want to hold up and say this is what makes it cool. The game is still good enough on the field and physical enough on the field and players making the adjustments, it's still going to be entertaining enough.

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