The Pittsburgh Steelers will face the Baltimore Ravens in Saturday night’s Wild Card showdown. The Steelers are coming off a loss against the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 18 and four consecutive losses, while the Ravens clinched the AFC North with a win over the Cleveland Browns.
The second game on Saturday will feature Pittsburgh and Baltimore, exclusively shown on Amazon Prime Video. Kickoff is scheduled for 8 p.m. (EST), but the nervousness has already begun. Let’s examine the voices you can expect to hear when these two rivals clash.
Announcers for Pittsburgh Steelers vs. Baltimore Ravens
- Lead Play-by-Play Announcer: Al Michaels
- Color Analyst: Kirk Herbstreit
- Sideline Reporter: Kaylee Hartung
The Prime Video trio will oversee what is sure to be a bruising, physical battle between bitter AFC North foes. The well-known broadcasting duo of Al Michaels and Kirk Herbstreit will take up the microphone for the much-anticipated matchup.
When it comes to iconic moments in sports, Michaels has called more than just football. Some of the biggest sports moments in history were narrated by Michaels, including the “Miracle on Ice,” where an unheralded group of college ice hockey players from the United States won the gold medal at the 1980 Olympic Winter Games.
Michaels is a five-time Sports Emmy Award winner, three-time NSMA National Sportscaster of The Year, and a Walter Cronkite Award for Excellence in Journalism recipient. The legendary announcer has been a mainstay around NFL circles for decades and is now the lead voice of Amazon’s NFL coverage.
Herbstreit donned Ohio State Buckeyes’ colors as a quarterback. As a senior, he was named the Ohio Gatorade Player of the Year. The 55-year-old began his broadcasting career in 1995 and is the recipient of five Sports Emmy Awards.
While Michaels has a lengthy history of collaborating with legends like John Madden, Cris Collinsworth, Dan Dierdorf, and Frank Gifford, he’s established a strong rapport with Herbstreit through Prime’s Thursday Night Football coverage.
On Herbstreit’s end, he’s proven his versatility by balancing his college football and NFL broadcasting responsibilities. Ironically, these two both had lengthy tenures at ABC but didn’t together until Amazon signed them.
Hartung will join the iconic duo from the sidelines to provide injury updates and take interviews. Hartung has emerged as a familiar face on Thursday nights during the NFL season, as the league and its fans have watched her interview coaches and big-name players before, during, and after each Thursday Night Football contest.
Hartung got her start at CBS News after graduating from Washington and Lee University in 2007 with a degree in journalism and politics. She then worked for ESPN as a correspondent for the Longhorn and SEC Networks.
Hartung was hired by CNN in 2017 but then left in 2019 to join ABC News as a correspondent. She spent three years with ABC News before Amazon announced that Hartung would return to sports broadcasting as Thursday Night Football’s sideline reporter in July 2022.
In January 2023, Hartung joined NBC News as a national correspondent for The Today Show.
Steelers vs. Ravens Preview
- Location: Baltimore, M&T Bank Stadium
- Time: 8 p.m. ET
- Streaming: Amazon Prime Video
Lamar Jackson has played five playoff games since the QB+ metric began its tracking in 2019 (his rookie season in 2018 predates the metric’s inception). In those playoff appearances, he has never posted a single-game grade higher than 80.1 (B-).
Jackson faces a tough challenge in the Steelers. In six career starts against Pittsburgh, he has never achieved a grade better than a C+. This includes his two matchups with the Steelers this season, which were his two lowest-graded performances of the year.
Jackson struggled significantly against the Steelers’ pass rush in their two matchups this season. He faced his highest and fifth-highest pressure rates of the year in those games, and his production under pressure plummeted, falling off a cliff compared to his typical dominance.
A key factor in Russell Wilson’s surprising early success as the Steelers’ starting quarterback was his deep ball proficiency. However, that strength has disappeared during the team’s four-game losing streak. Since Week 15, Wilson has failed to throw a touchdown on passes traveling 15+ air yards, a stark contrast to the seven deep-ball touchdowns he recorded in his first seven starts.
The Ravens were vulnerable to the deep ball early in the season, but they’ve significantly improved since moving Kyle Hamilton to safety full-time in Week 11. Since then, Baltimore ranks second in the NFL in completion percentage allowed on passes of 15+ yards (31.8%). For comparison, from Weeks 1-10, the Ravens ranked 29th in this category, allowing a 54.9% completion rate.