PRO FOOTBALL DAILY REPORT : No Play-by-Play, Only Analysis

It won’t be announcerless, but almost. On Dec. 9, Fox will use studio analysts Terry Bradshaw and Jimmy Johnson--without a play-by-play announcer--to make the call on its national game, Arizona at San Diego.

David Hill, Fox Sports president, calls it an experiment “and not a direction Fox Sports plans to move.”

Said Bradshaw: “We were guinea pigs when we came over to Fox. That’s what’s exciting about it. We’re like astronauts. . . . It’s exciting and scary.”

Bradshaw, who came over from CBS last season when Fox took over the NFC package, last worked a game in the 1993 exhibition season. Johnson, the former Dallas coach, has never worked a game from the broadcast booth, on the other hand.

The plan is to have Bradshaw and Johnson discussing the game as they would if they were fans, albeit extremely knowledgeable ones.

Much of the duties of the play-by-play announcer, such as calling downs and yardage, will be handled by on-screen graphics.

“I expect Terry and Jimmy to be more conversational and less structured than a typical broadcast team,” Hill said.

It represents perhaps the biggest departure from normal broadcast style since NBC did a game without announcers in 1980.