NFL Network Talents Learn Their Fate After ESPN Takeover
The play lasted just nine seconds. Fourth down, the Bears trailed by 11, season on the line: Quarterback Caleb Williams drifted left, got knocked off his feet, and somehow managed to flick a perfect 27-yard pass between four Packers into the hands of receiver Rome Odunze.
Tim Jenkins kept replaying the video, switching among camera angles that didn’t air on the live broadcast. For his audience of more than 52,000 YouTube subscribers, he pointed out two crucial details.
First, Bears tight end Colston Loveland was wide open on the other side of the field and could’ve scored if Williams tossed him the ball instead. Second, Williams never got the chance to see Loveland, because he had to scramble away from the defense after Bears guard Jonah Jackson lunged out of position.
The 84-minute video analyzing this play and other key game moments is the kind of patient film study you’d find at a coaches’ roundtable or players’ session. It’s since garnered more than 42,000 views. The nuanced understanding makes sense for the 34-year-old Jenkins, a former pro football player who has turned his on-field IQ into All Things QB on YouTube.
Jenkins’s own NFL moment lasted only one throw. In 2013, the St. Louis Rams invited him to training camp, where he completed his sole NFL pass attempt in the team’s third preseason game. The Rams cut him the next day. Later that year, he briefly joined the Calgary Stampeders of the Canadian Football League.
Backup QBs who didn’t make a mark on the field usually don’t have the opportunity to get in front of a camera—not when they’re competing with the Tom Bradys and Tony Romos of the world. But as sports-content creators rise, Jenkins is among a group of former backup quarterbacks who have built businesses online by breaking down advanced football concepts.
Kurt Benkert, who lasted five years in the NFL, dissects game footage and also posts content showing viewers how to play the Madden video game franchise with the mindset of a pro. His YouTube clips have been viewed more than 132 million times. There’s also Chase Daniel, who bounced around on eight NFL teams and posts breakdowns on YouTube to complement his work as an ESPN analyst. And J.T. O’Sullivan, who played for 11 NFL teams, reaches almost 400,000 subscribers across YouTube and Patreon. He refers to himself as “The Internet’s QB Coach.”
Following his short pro stint, Jenkins returned home to Colorado and began training high school kids for $20 an hour. “I didn’t want to get a real job,” he tells Front Office Sports. “I didn’t want to go sell insurance.”
After gradually growing his training business through word of mouth, Jenkins decided to upload quarterback drills to YouTube in 2018 to get his name out there. “It was so horrific when it first started,” he says. He was lucky if 50 people stumbled onto a video.
Jenkins abandoned the channel for more than a year until a Broncos insider asked him to appear on a popular AM radio show. He became a regular guest and, when listeners would ask a question, he returned to his YouTube channel and started breaking down plays on video after the fact to illustrate his points.
This time, a few thousand people found his work, so he stuck with it. By the time the 2021 NFL Draft rolled around, his in-depth QB prospect breakdowns started to surpass 30,000 views each. He now focuses on analysis of the Broncos (Denver is the main market for his training academy, Jenkins Elite) and the Bears (the Chicago sports talk radio station 670 The Score frequently brings him on as a guest).
His audience isn’t massive compared to some sports creators, but the content is still monetizable. (“I’m old enough where it’s like I used to make fun of people who YouTubed,” Jenkins says. “We were like, ‘Oh, that’s not a real job.’”)
A popular video with tens of thousands of views can bring in somewhere between $500 and $4,000. Ad partnerships with brands like Bear Mattress drive extra revenue. Jenkins also started offering channel memberships near the end of 2025. Since then, about 400 people have signed up for at least $5.99 a month in exchange for access to members-only videos with additional analysis. (YouTube takes a 30% cut, which makes NFL agent fees seem downright generous.)
Part of what drives this interest from subscribers, he says, is the length of each video. As 20-second highlight clips bounce around social media, these football creators are often posting content that runs upward of 30 minutes. They loop through the same play at different angles and use a telestrator to diagram routes and explain details.
“I actually think our perception of fans is wrong,” Jenkins says. “Real fans want actual analysis. They want to learn. They want to find out, ‘Hey, why does my team struggle?’ Or, ‘Why are we good in the red zone?’”
Jenkins typically produces two public videos a week and two additional clips for members. A half-hour video may take two or three hours to create. Most of that time comes from pre-production—rewatching games to identify the best plays to analyze. Jenkins uses a tool called Hudl for the telestrations and OBS Studio to record his screen. Then there’s some light editing for intros, outros, ad breaks, and the thumbnail image.
Even as they labor over videos, creators like Jenkins are taking a risk as they eschew league media rights. For decades, the NFL has prevented most people from using game footage online. In 2023, the league debuted its Access Pass Program, which allowed a small group of creators to use licensed game footage. In 2025, the league launched Access Pass for Legends, which expanded the program to include a select group of former players including O’Sullivan and Benkert.
Jenkins applied but didn’t make the cut—still, he continues to use the footage. He’s walking a tightrope: The NFL can issue a copyright strike on his public videos, and the moment it does, he stops earning ad revenue for that particular clip. For now, he exists in a sweet spot where he’s popular enough to be earning but not so big that he’s an easy target for the league.
In October, ESPN analyst and former backup QB Dan Orlovsky revealed that the league blocked him from sharing video analysis on social media. (Neither Orlovsky nor the NFL shared why.) Perhaps the league wanted him to save the commentary for his work on ESPN. It’s unclear what puts creators in the crosshairs as the NFL appears to enforce media-rights policies differently depending on the person and the platform.
With his Broncos focus, Jenkins is now getting ready for the AFC championship game. With starting QB Bo Nix out for the remainder of the playoffs with a broken ankle, Jenkins has turned his attention to their backup quarterback, Jarrett Stidham, for a special video preview of the matchup with the Patriots.
“There are some guys that do all the teams—they do everything, which is great,” Jenkins says. “I really think it’s best to focus on certain teams so you can be the go-to guy for fans in those markets … seeing the evolution of the season is pretty cool.”
Once the NFL season ends, Jenkins will take a break from his YouTube channel and dedicate more time to training players. There’s a direct correlation between his analysis and his business, he says: “What it’s forced me to do is stay on top of the concepts that guys are running. That’s just as important when you’re training a guy as staying on top of the biomechanics, knowing what throws they’re going to get asked to make.”
