As soon as news broke that Joe Buck was signing a $100 million–plus contract extension with ESPN, the phone calls and texts began: What’s up with Troy Aikman?

After all, the legendary former Cowboys quarterback has been joined at the hip with Buck since 2002. They spent 20 years as a team at Fox Sports before jumping to ESPN together in 2022. Since taking over at Monday Night Football, their profile and influence have only increased. In my book, they’re the best current broadcast duo calling NFL games.

Last week, ESPN negotiated a six-year extension with Buck worth $108 million, according to The Athletic. Aikman has to be next in line, right? Not necessarily, or at least not for a while, warn sources, even though Aikman and Buck are represented by the same talent agency, CAA. As one source told Front Office Sports: “The big question to me: Why wasn’t Troy renewed at the same time as Joe?”

There are several possible reasons. First, there’s a big pay gap between color commentators like Aikman and play-by-play announcers like Buck. Going back to John Madden, game analysts are the star performers who make more money. Shortly after Aikman signed a five-year deal worth $18 million a year in 2022, Tom Brady completely reset the market for game analysts with a 10-year deal at Fox Sports worth $37.5 million per year. So one reason for the delay could be Aikman and ESPN trying and failing to find the sweet spot between Aikman’s $18 million and Brady’s $37.5 million. 

Second, the looming game of musical chairs among color commentators could be another factor. Tony Romo could be a goner at CBS after being put on indefinite leave. And rival analysts like Fox’s Greg Olsen, Amazon Prime Video’s Kirk Herbstreit, and CBS’s J.J. Watt are each up after this season. That gives both sides options. Put it all together, and you have a tricky, delicate negotiation that could take time. 

As for ESPN, it’s declining to address Aikman and Buck’s expiring contracts until after Super Bowl LXI on Feb. 14, 2027. “With this historic season for ESPN now underway, our entire focus is on bringing fans the best possible football coverage, culminating with our first Super Bowl,” says Josh Krulewitz, ESPN’s EVP of communications. “To that end, we won’t be addressing talent contract specifics before the Super Bowl.” 

Are the two sides talking? Sure. But multiple sources warn: No deal is imminent for Aikman. That raises some interesting questions, especially with ESPN poised to televise its historic first two Super Bowls after the NFL’s 2026 and 2030 seasons.

Let’s start with money. The 59-year-old Aikman is now in the final season of a five-year, $90 million deal. At $18 million a year, he’s tied with Romo as the second-highest-paid NFL game analyst behind Brady.

Under his reported new deal, the 57-year-old Buck is set to jump to $18 million a year from his current $15 million. If ESPN were to give Aikman a similar 20% raise, that would take him to $21.6 million a year. Yes, he’d pass Romo, but he’d still be well behind Brady. That might not be good enough. Especially if Aikman wants “Brady Money.” 

There’s an intriguing backstory here. When Fox signed Brady to his monster 10-year, $375 million deal back in 2022, Aikman felt slighted by his longtime bosses at Fox. 

After all, Aikman had successfully called six Super Bowls with Buck for Fox. He was nothing but professional over his successful two-decade run. Yet here was his longtime employer leaving him dangling while showering riches on a TV rookie, albeit one with seven Super Bowl rings.

According to Aikman, his issue with Fox wasn’t money—it was its lack of communication. During negotiations, management kept him in the dark. In fact, Aikman said Fox didn’t even make him a final offer before letting him walk to ESPN.

As he recalled to a Dallas sports radio station in 2022: “They never made an offer. I didn’t have any conversations with Fox until I got a call to congratulate me on my new deal. So that was a decision they made—and it’s fine.”

Then there’s the performance factor. Aikman’s too classy to say it, but Brady is no Aikman in the broadcast booth. Yes, Brady improved greatly during his second year on the air. But Aikman’s experience, gravitas, and willingness to tell it like it is make him the top NFL color commentator on TV, period.

That’s an enormous asset to ESPN. But Super Bowl–winning QBs wouldn’t be where they are if they weren’t fiercely competitive. Maybe Aikman feels the time has come to even the pay scales with Brady, and he’s stepping forward to claim what’s his.

Plus, Aikman knows ESPN is nearing a new deal with Pat McAfee for $60 million a year. Yes, McAfee’s not a true employee but more of an independent contractor who pays for his own staff and production and leases his content to ESPN. But with ESPN and parent Disney showing two Super Bowls over a five-year span, you could argue Aikman and Buck are their two most valuable employees. If Aikman wants a mega-raise, he’d have a strong case. Of course, Disney/ESPN would counter that Brady’s contract was an outlier that won’t be repeated.

Aikman has negotiating leverage. If ESPN is not willing to pay him what he wants, other NFL media-rights partners could step up. Given Romo’s tenuous situation, CBS could make a run at Aikman and return J.J. Watt to the No. 2 team with Ian Eagle, where he excelled last season. 

Then there’s Amazon Prime Video. Herbstreit’s deal is up after this season. I can see him giving up his Thursday Night Football gig to concentrate solely on college football at ESPN/ABC. Prime Video’s Jay Marine told FOS at Tuned In last year that he wants to land the Super Bowl someday. Who better to be the face and voice of Prime’s first Big Game than Aikman?

But time marches on. Aikman, who turns 60 on Nov. 21, has been calling games for 25 years. Maybe he doesn’t want to sign a long-term extension that would take him into his mid-60s. He’s consulted with the Dolphins. He’s mused about joining an NFL front office and walking away from broadcasting to enjoy life. He told sports media columnist Richard Deitsch he doesn’t see himself behind the mic when he’s 70 years old. “I’ve not had falls off since I was a kid,” he said. “So there’s just things I want to be able to go do, and things I want to see, before my time on Earth is done. And I want to be able to do it in the fall.” 

Still, Aikman doesn’t have all of the leverage in this negotiation. The mothership has options, too, especially if it wants to get younger in the MNF booth. If ESPN can’t come to an agreement with Aikman, it could easily turn to 41-year-old Olsen, a proven No. 1 analyst who’s stuck behind Brady on the depth chart at Fox. Or the 37-year-old golden boy Watt at CBS. Sources speculate ESPN may be playing the long game and waiting for the next TV star to come straight off the field, such as Chiefs star Travis Kelce or Rams coach Sean McVay.

Stranger things have happened in contract negotiations. I never expected Aikman and Buck to leave Fox. But ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro changed sports TV history when he swooped in and raided the duo. Maybe Pitaro and ESPN content chief Burke Magnus have another shocker up their sleeves.

The smart money expects Aikman and ESPN to come to terms. We’ve heard multiple times how thrilled and proud ESPN management is that its NFL broadcast booth went from worst to first. And look at MNF’s performance in Week 1. The team of Aikman, Buck, Lisa Salters, and Laura Rutledge averaged a broadcast-TV-like 23.2 million viewers for Broncos-Chiefs. That was ESPN’s most-watched Week 1 MNF game since it landed the primetime package in 2006, and third-most-watched ever. Did we mention Aikman’s main telecast dwarfed Peyton and Eli Manning’s ManningCast, which pulled only 705,000 viewers? 

Besides Brady, no other color commentator comes close to Aikman’s gravitas and three rings with the legendary Cowboys dynasty of the ’90s. On Monday night, he and Buck were behind the mic for MNF’s telecast of Rams’ 28–6 victory over the Giants. The ratings generated by the nation’s two largest TV markets in New York and Los Angeles should be huge.

Playing chicken is always risky. If the two sides don’t come to an agreement over the next five months, Aikman could be the biggest sports TV free agent since Brady. The last thing ESPN wants during its “Year of the Super Bowl” is drama over Aikman’s contract status. But that’s what’s happening at the moment.

During a new interview with Deitsch, Aikman admitted he was surprised his extension didn’t get done before the new season. Going back to his days with the Cowboys, he’s never worked the final year of a contract. But in his 26th year of broadcasting, he doesn’t seem worried. 

“I thought it would be done. It’s not. When it might get done, if it gets done, is anyone’s guess,” said Aikman. “And it’s just something that I’m really putting a lot of energy into.”