Via The Big Lead, Cris Carter and Ray Lewis will not be brought back for their NFL coverage for the upcoming season. We already knew that “Sunday Countdown” was losing Mike Ditka and Keyshawn Johnson in favor of Matt Hasselbeck and Charles Woodson, but losing Cris Carter is another changing of the guard moment for the long time ESPN pre game show. The only members of the cast remaining are expected to be Chris Berman (yay!) and Tom Jackson.
Carter is expected to be replaced by former Fox Sports analyst Randy Moss. Moss has done a fine job since joining Fox Sports and hosted their pre pre game show on Fox Sports 1 previously. He has received more and more opportunities with Fox, including replacing Terry Bradshaw for the network’s Super Bowl coverage, after Bradshaw had a death in the family. Replacing Carter is interesting for Moss, giving their recent history together.
With all of the turnover in ESPN’s NFL coverage (Mike Tirico has officially joined NBC Sports, with Sean McDonough replacing him on “Monday Night Football”), perhaps the network felt that it needed to freshen up their coverage. With all of the new talent on “Countdown”, maybe ESPN will come to the realization that replacing their lead host could be somewhat helpful.
This also may be the end of the ridiculous “C’Mon Man” segment that the analysts loved so much. We hope this goes the way of “Jacked Up” since it was equally stupid.