Two weeks ago, Troy Aikman sounded like a broadcaster who expected his run on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” to end with this season’s Super Bowl. His longtime partner, Joe Buck, is already signed to a new extension, while the Hall of Fame Dallas Cowboys quarterback is still in the final year of his own contract.

Now, though, the focus has shifted to who might take his place.

ESPN Could Go Back to Fox for Greg Olsen

The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported that Fox’s Greg Olsen is widely seen across the sports-media industry as the frontrunner for the seat, even as “ESPN does not have a set plan, nor any agreements in place today, if Aikman is done with the network after the Super Bowl.”

Marchand reported that the network “could look to Fox for a fourth time, having gotten its current booth and now director from its rival.”

“Fox’s No. 2 game analyst, Greg Olsen, is widely considered by people inside the sports-media industry to be the favorite to replace Aikman on Monday Night Football, though ESPN could try to convince Peyton and/or Eli Manning, Travis and/or Jason Kelce or may hold out the possibility of using Kirk Herbstreit, though he just re-signed an NFL deal with Prime Video,” Marchand added.

That current booth came over in 2022, when Buck and Aikman left Fox for ESPN. Aikman reached his deal first, and Buck followed weeks later. Both signed multi-year contracts that were later reported to run five years, putting each broadcaster in the final year of his original ESPN deal entering 2026.

Olsen’s name has been tied to the job for weeks.

Puck’s John Ourand reported on Oct. 15 that his best sources were predicting Olsen would land in ESPN’s booth next season, and he pointed to the analyst’s ambitions: “Olsen, who lost the top analyst job to Tom Brady in 2024, has made it clear that he wants to be a number one analyst. And right now, it looks like ESPN’s seat will be open.”

That doesn’t make Olsen’s exit from Fox a done deal. Like Aikman, he entered this season in the final year of his contract, and Ourand reported that “while he has had some negotiations over a renewal, nothing is signed.”

Troy Aikman Is Already Talking About Free Agency

The uncertainty around Aikman’s seat goes back to September, when Buck agreed to his extension, reportedly worth more than $100 million over six seasons. Aikman, meanwhile, has reportedly yet to receive a formal offer.

Before the Buffalo Bills and Los Angeles Rams met at SoFi Stadium on Oct. 12, Buck “broke the ice” on that unspoken tension and the two argued, Front Office Sports’ Ryan Glasspiegel reported, citing a source. The argument calmed down before the game, and Glasspiegel wrote that “viewers never would have been able to decipher that something was amiss.”

Three days after the argument, Aikman addressed his future. “I’ll broadcast through this season and I’ll be a free agent at the end of the year and kind of see what happens,” he said in a Dallas radio interview.

“It just seems to be where they’re going — that they’re gonna go in a different direction because there’s been no talks, no contract negotiations,” he told Jimmy Traina that night.

“We’re in a Super Bowl year. The Super Bowl is Feb. 14. My contract ends in March. It just doesn’t seem logical that if they were gonna keep me, something wouldn’t be in place before that.”

Whatever ESPN decides about Aikman, Buck’s place in the booth is settled. His new deal means he calls the Super Bowl this season and again when ESPN/ABC gets the game in 2031.

If Aikman leaves, it would end a partnership that began when he joined Buck at Fox in 2002, after winning three Super Bowl titles with the Cowboys. The two became the longest-tenured broadcast team in NFL history, and the analyst most widely tipped to take Aikman’s seat still works for Fox.