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Stephen A. Smith is returning to ESPN’s Monday Night Countdown.
Smith is expected to appear on three or four episodes of the pregame show this season, an ESPN spokesman confirmed to Front Office Sports.
On Monday night, Smith made his first appearance of the season with host Scott Van Pelt and castmates Pat McAfee, Marcus Spears, Jason Kelce, and Jason McCourty from Los Angeles before the network’s telecast of Giants-Rams. As a special guest, Smith popped up on the Monday Night Countdown desk about 20 minutes into the show, where he dapped up Van Pelt, McAfee, and Spears.
After the Rams’ 28–6 victory, the featured commentator and executive producer of First Take immediately flew back to New York to host his popular weekday morning show.
Smith debuted on Monday Night Countdown last season, appearing three times with Van Pelt & Co. He was absent, however, from the Countdown desk ahead of ESPN’s Week 1 telecast of the Chiefs’ victory over the Broncos, raising some questions as to whether his role on the program was one season and done. Monday also marked Smith’s first Countdown appearance alongside McAfee, who is new to the pregame show this season, uniting arguably ESPN’s two biggest stars.
Growing up in Hollis, Queens, the native New Yorker dreamed of following in the footsteps of his idol Howard Cosell by covering the NFL.
When Smith negotiated his monster five-year, $100 million-plus contract extension in 2025, he specifically asked for and got the chance to work on ESPN’s Monday Night Football coverage. Smith previously explained his idea to FOS during ESPN’s Media Day in 2024.
“I don’t want to insult the legacy of the great Howard Cosell, who’s somebody that I idolized. But that’s what I want to do,” Smith told me. “When I think about the NFL, I’m not talking about being in the booth with Troy Aikman and Joe Buck. You don’t mess with that chemistry; you leave that alone. But I’m unapologetic about what I want. I would love to be a part of Monday Night Football.”
Conversely, Smith dropped off Malika Andrews’s NBA Countdown pregame show last season once TNT Sports licensed Charles Barkley’s Inside the NBA to serve as ABC/ESPN’s premier pregame hoops show.
The big question now around Monday Night Football is what happens with Troy Aikman? While Joe Buck has signed a six-year contract extension worth $108 million, there’s been little to no progress on a new deal for the ex-Cowboys QB, who’s now in the last season of his original five-year, $90 million deal.
It’s a tricky, delicate situation given that Aikman and Buck are poised to call ESPN’s historic first Super Bowl at SoFi Stadium on Feb. 14, 2027. Monday Night Football, the granddaddy of all primetime sports programming, celebrated its 56th anniversary on Monday night.
