The NFL’s regular season is nearly ending, and the stakes don’t just go up; they are transformed completely. The Divisional Round represents the point where contenders separate from pretenders and where one wrong decision in the fourth quarter costs a decade of building. For a broadcaster, these are the moments that matter most. And when the NFL reaches this stage, the league is just as careful about who tells the story as who plays in it.

The big news came when ESPN dropped a major postseason update, locking in two primetime playoff games as the centerpiece of its NFL coverage: a Monday night Wild Card matchup on January 12 and a Divisional Round game on January 17 or 18.

Cowboys legend Troy Aikman will be on the call with Joe Buck, Lisa Salters, and Laura Rutledge on both broadcasts, keeping ESPN’s top booth built around the Hall of Famer at the center of its postseason push, with full matchup details and production plans set to be revealed soon on ESPN Press Room.

And this does not end here, Troy Aikman is also one of the voices for the San Francisco 49ers vs Seattle Seahawks game on Saturday, January 3, at 8:00 p.m. ET, paired once again with play-by-play commentator Joe Buck for their historic partnership. The game will be broadcast on ESPN, ABC, and ESPN+. This assignment arrives as part of ESPN’s Week 18 Saturday doubleheader.

The Seahawks-49ers matchup holds immense playoff importance. The winner gets the NFC West title and will clinch the No. 1 overall seed in the NFC, which is followed by a first-round bye, a big advantage that only the best team in the conference receives. The loser drops to wild-card status and must travel for the opening round of the playoffs.

That high-stakes backdrop sets the stage for the broadcast booth, too, where a veteran duo is just as familiar with pressure as the teams on the field.  

Troy Aikman & Joe Buck, a legendary duo

Joe Buck and Troy Aikman’s partnership had become the longest-tenured network broadcast team in NFL history, a run that began when they were first paired in 2002 and continued through their move from Fox to ESPN’s Monday Night Football in 2022.

Over more than 22 seasons together, they have called upwards of 300 regular-season games and more than 50 postseason matchups, including six Super Bowls: XXXIX, XLII, XLV, XLVIII, LI, and LIV.

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Their work has also included 18 NFC Championship Games, cementing them as the default voices for the league’s biggest stages whenever networks want both continuity and big-game poise in the booth.

As of the 2023 season, they officially surpassed Pat Summerall and John Madden to become the NFL’s longest-paired broadcast team ever, a record that continues to extend with each new year they open another slate of Monday Night Football and postseason assignments together.

“It means a lot to me because my dad was a partner to both Pat and John. I knew them when I was a kid… and somebody goes, ‘Oh, by the way you are passing Madden and Summerall.’ That was surprising to me,” Buck had said.

​With these two on board, this divisional round assignment ensures that his voice will guide fans through the most decisive weekend of the regular season, when one bad decision ends a team’s year.