Ryan Fitzpatrick and Andrew Whitworth return as studio analysts on Amazon Prime Video’s Thursday Night Football coverage this season—and their Fitz & Whit podcast will also have placement before some of the games.
Ahead of TNF’s 2027 debut for the Bills’ matchup against the Lions on Thursday, the duo spoke with Front Office Sports about the journey of their show, whether they’d want to pivot to being color commentators, how concerned the Rams should be about their sluggish start to the season in Australia, Fitzpatrick’s Deshaun Watson commentary, and Whitworth’s encouragement of Blake Griffin as an NBA analyst.
Front Office Sports: Your show Fitz & Whit is going to be part of Amazon’s pregame coverage for Thursday Night Football at times this season. What does that mean to you guys, and what has the journey of the podcast been like?
Andrew Whitworth: I think it’s something that we always were interested in. We started our podcast a couple years ago and really, for us, I think it was one of those things we just enjoyed having more time to sit and catch up about the games and our travels and our families and everything else.
And then you realize that, after Thursday night, there’s so much stuff we gathered for those games that there’s more conversations we’d love to have that ties into those games and ties into leaguewide, and I think that’s where it started. And then we started having the discussions and came to wondering if [airing the show before TNF] could be something that’s a possibility. And it just fits.
I’m somebody who very much feels like I’m a one-helmet person. I want to have one logo on my helmet. And that’s how I like to go about my work. Everything being under the Amazon umbrella makes it a lot of fun. We hope to create something that’s really cool for people to watch and have an opportunity to get into the game and get excited about NFL football leading into our broadcast.
Ryan Fitzpatrick: What I would add to that too is in playing for 17 years and with playing for many teams, there [were many] relationships that we were able to form while we were in the league and the perspective that we were able to form from them.
We just felt like there was a unique space for us to be able to talk about it, to be able to leverage some of the great friendships and relationships that we have and just provide a different perspective of a Coach [Sean] McVay sitting down and it’s not necessarily all about X’s and O’s but it’s about the person and the human a little bit. So I think as we got going with the podcast and love just talking about football and our adventures, we thought, ‘Man, we’ve got a nice platform here now to actually provide some good insight to people as well about the NFL game that we really love and the league that gave us so much.’ So a little bit for us to just pay it back to everybody else for the experiences that we were given, and afforded and the life that we’re able to have because of it.
FOS: I think both of you are really good in the studio, but I’m wondering if there’s a scenario where you would want to be a regular game analyst in your careers.
RF: I’ve done some stuff with Sky Sports [in the UK] for the Super Bowl and last year I called a game for Westwood One on the radio for a Monday night game. As of right now, it’s not something I’m really interested in, though. I’ve really enjoyed the studio stuff a lot, and I think the point I’m at in my life right now, and everything else, I’m very, very happy to be a part of the team that I’m with right now, and not really looking to take the step that next step into being an actual on-air guy.
AW: Yeah, I think I’m very similar. I think that’s one of the reasons we really were into this idea of having another bigger part of Thursday nights and having our podcast, it both gives us the opportunity to be around our kids—our families—in the way we want to set our schedules for the week.
And I think it’s obviously something that would be a dream to do, but it’s not really something right now that fits my current life—four teenagers, I got a lot going on. So being at home [on weekends] and working Thursday nights, it just all fits, and that’s what we enjoy.
FOS: Is there a concern that this Rams season just goes off the tracks really fast? I know it’s just been one game, but I’m having flashbacks of the year that the Eagles signed all of those players like Nnamdi Asomugha and everyone thought they were a “super team” and I’m getting a little bit of a feeling of that in this Rams team. How much of a concern is it for you guys that this could just end up being a season from hell for them?
RF: As long as Sean McVay’s the coach and Matthew Stafford is quarterback, they’re going to be just fine.
AW: I hear what you’re saying. I mean, with those guys, you’re going to have success with some of the talent they have. They’re going to be a good football team. My concern is when you start saying they’re a Super Bowl team and all those things. The reality of the NFL—that’s why it’s such a beautiful game, and we see last to first, and first to last every year and teams in playoff games that nobody expected to be there—is that you’ve got to earn it every single week on the grass. And they play in one of the hardest divisions, which Arizona just confirmed Sunday that they’re going to be somebody to contend with as well this year.
So I think that in their division, it’s going to be a challenge to win every division game. And then outside of that, because they were a good team and how their schedule’s falling, they’ve got a lot of other really good teams they’re playing. So the level of play that they’re going to have to be at is going to have to match how good they were last year each and every week because that’s the challenge of their schedule.
The NFL has a way of humbling you very quickly. And that’s what I looked at Week 1, it was just a nice little wake-up call for them to know that you can’t just show up and people are going to bow down to you. And I see it as a positive in terms of the overall storyline for the season and how it ends up going because they’ve obviously got a lot of work to do. And it’s just a nice little reminder that you can’t just show up again.
FOS: Ryan: You had some pretty brutal honesty about Deshaun Watson during the preseason in your work with Amazon, and it stood out in contrast to the game announcers. Can you believe that they’re sticking with him? They talk about how this is from reviewing the tape. What magical tape do some of these football coaches have access to where they think that it’s ever going to get any better with him at this point?
RF: Well, they’re also there every day, and they’re installing a new offense and a new system. So this is obviously something that they have seen in practice, in OTAs, and throughout training camp.
And so I think as fans, sometimes all of us from the outside looking in, we judge it from what we can see which is a preseason game here, or a couple reps there that you see on Twitter. And so I can promise you that they’re trying to get this thing headed in the right direction in Cleveland. I think the biggest deciding factor in Deshaun starting the season as the starter was you can’t have it the other way. You can’t have Shedeur [Sanders] as a starter and go back to Deshaun. Once Deshaun is not playing anymore, he’s done as a Cleveland Brown. And so to start the season with Deshaun, let’s see how it goes. If he doesn’t play well, you’re going to have Shadeur and be able to put him in.
The problem is, and part of what I said on-air is it’s just not a situation for success for any quarterback. There’s going to be failure at that position this year because it’s just not set up to be a position to be successful in. And the hope is that in Cleveland, with some of these young pieces they have, that they’ll be able to develop these guys, and all of a sudden, the trajectory starts heading in the right direction. But this is going to be a year for growth and not a year for winning football games for them.
FOS: Whit: You helped recruit Blake Griffin to Amazon. How did you go about convincing him to take that job and what has it been like to watch as he’s really bloomed into a popular NBA analyst?
AW: It’s been a lot of fun. He and I have had some cool conversations about it. I’m excited for him. He would text us while watching Thursday Night Football and tell me about our broadcast and how we’re doing and so I know he was a big fan of watching games and some of this stuff.
I think we live in an era in sports media with analysts and especially what we do is really less about conforming people to the networks, and more about people being who they are—and that’s shining through. When he and I would have the conversations, it would be like, ‘Hey man, you don’t have to be like any other NBA guy that covers the game. You don’t have to fit in a certain box. Like, I think you’re funny and witty and an amazing dude and you can just go do it and be exactly that and people are gonna love you.’
And I think when you look at broadcasting now and all the different nights, it’s one of the cool things with Thursday night that he and I would talk about is, I think our bond and our relationships and the time we spend with one another shows through on the TV screen when people watch us.
I think it resonates with people that we’re the kind of people they’d wanna hang out and watch a game with. I think that’s what Blake Griffin is. He’s funny and witty and he seems like a good person that people would love to pull up a stool and say, ‘Man, Blake, I want to watch an NBA game with you, and you make jokes and tell me stuff that informs me about the game and just have a good time together.’
He’s done an excellent job of that, and I’m really happy for him. So it wasn’t a lot of convincing as much as just encouraging him that he could be special at it and he could go be himself.
