Dan Le Batard turned a Monday Night Football broadcast into an impromptu linguistic audit this week, according to Breitbart, after noticing that ESPN color analyst Troy Aikman kept reaching for the same phrase to describe the players and coaches on the field.
Broadcasting a Monday Night Football game comes with an upside and a downside that are essentially the same thing: the entire football-watching world hears you. Le Batard was one of those listeners, and by the second quarter he had started taking notes.
The first-quarter tally
Le Batard began posting Aikman’s comments on social media after the opening quarter, quoting the analyst describing the Denver roster as “as deep as any in football,” Andy Reid as understanding “as much as anyone in football” when it comes to needing to run the ball, and wideout Pat Bryant as having had “as good a camp as anyone in football.”
Kenneth Walker’s patience, Denver’s wide receiver room, the Broncos’ secondary, and cornerback Trent McDuffie all drew versions of the same construction, with Le Batard noting that the entire list came from just the first quarter.
It continued into the second quarter
Rather than let it go, Le Batard kept chronicling. After the second quarter he posted another round of quotes, including Aikman calling Denver “as good as any defense in football,” saying the team “plays as much man as anyone in football,” and describing the Broncos’ offensive line as “as good… as there is in football.”
Defensive coordinator Vance Joseph and head coach Sean Payton each got the same treatment, with Aikman calling both “as good… as there is in all of football” at their respective jobs. Riley Moss, Le Batard noted, “gets targeted as much as anyone in football.” Courtland Sutton, meanwhile, was “as good as anyone in football winning one-on-one.”
When followers responded with disbelief that Aikman could have used the same phrasing quite that often, Le Batard insisted he had gone back and transcribed it.
“I went back and wrote it. I didn’t believe it. I’m like, that can’t be how I’m hearing this. I’m listening passively… like, am I hearing this right?”
A crutch even the greats develop
The episode is less an indictment of Aikman’s overall work than a snapshot of how broadcasters — even ones widely regarded as among the best in the business — can fall into verbal habits over the course of a long season. Aikman’s analysis is generally well-regarded, but a phrase that works once can become a tic by the twentieth repetition in a single night.
That kind of comfort with familiar wording is common in live sports commentary, where analysts are talking continuously for three hours and reaching for comparisons in real time. The result, on Monday night, was a broadcast in which nearly every coach, player, and position group in Denver apparently ranked at the very top of the sport in at least one category.
Le Batard’s running list gave the observation a comic edge, but it also amounted to a real piece of media criticism: the kind of thing that circulates quickly because it is both specific and verifiable, drawn directly from the broadcast rather than from a general impression.
Whether Aikman adjusts is an open question, though the source article’s own conclusion was that he is likely to figure it out — describing him, without apparent irony, as being as good as there is in broadcasting.
Source: www.breitbart.com — https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2026/09/16/dan-le-batard-trolls-troy-aikmans-mnf-commentary-am-i-hearing-this-right/