Reese anxious to get back to work despite coronavirus
Reese, voice of the Eagles, still going strong but doesn’t know what awaits in ’20 season
From the Miracles of the Meadowlands to the Fog Bowl, the Dream Team to the Super Bowl LII championship parade, Merrill Reese has just about seen it all in 43 years broadcasting Eagles football.
Blurt out a specific year and the NFL’s longest-tenured radio play-by-play announcer can recreate it in high verbal definition.
Reese, the Voice of the Eagles, is itching to get back to work. But never has he approached a campaign so full of uncertainty. There is nothing comparable to the coronavirus that has taken too many lives and obliterated the country on so many levels.
Though the NFL season is slated to go on as scheduled, the Pro Football Hall of Fame game and induction ceremony have been postponed until 2021. With the coronavirus spiking in a handful of states, it’s possible the season could be paused, as it was after the
9/11 attacks.
The Eagles opened the
2001 season with a loss to Kurt Warner and the St. Louis Rams at Veterans Stadium. Two days later, on Sept. 11, terrorists crashed jets into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Another hijacked airliner possibly targeting either the Capitol or the White House was downed in the Pennsylvania countryside.
Life for all Americans changed forever. Professional
“I care first about people’s health. That’s the most important thing to me in this pandemic. I’m in that senior category. I am healthy and I work out regularly. But nobody knows what life has in store for them.”
— Merrill Reese on the effects of the coronavirus pandemic
sports fans felt the ramped-up security when the games resumed.
“It was a long two weeks,” Reese recalled. “We played Seattle at the University of Washington Stadium in our next game. The security was different than anything we’d ever seen with what was allowed into the stadium. The pat-downs, the dogs searching our luggage, that was the first time any of that occurred. But we got used to it and it’s been with us ever since. We felt safe because we knew every precaution had been taken.”
When the NFL kicks off the 2020 season — and there is a growing feeling the start may be delayed beyond September — there will be another wave of unprecedented changes for the safety of players, coaches, club employees, media and spectators, however large or small the numbers will be.
Already the NFL has decided to tarp-off six to eight rows of seats in the lower bowls of stadiums for player safety, which pretty much takes the fun out of the Lambeau Leap. Players likely will wear newly developed clear protective shields for practices and games, and standard masks when indoors or around teammates for meetings. Among other safety practices, players will be tested three times a week for COVID-19.
What happens when positive tests occur hasn’t been announced. A positive test by an NBA player will require him to be quarantined until he can test negative in at least two consecutive tests.
NFL locker rooms, including the NovaCare Complex and Lincoln Financial Field, are being reconfigured to accommodate the six-foot social distancing standard. It’s unclear what the standard will be for spectators at games or how many will be able to attend.
It’s also not known if Reese, analyst Mike Quick and spotter Billy Werndl will travel to road games. Major League Baseball has notified home TV and radio broadcasters that they won’t make road trips, per reports.
Reese, 77, took over as the play-by-play man with two games left in the 1977 season. But he’s always learning. So he will keep an eye on his baseball colleagues to see how they deal with calling games off TV monitors.
“There’s been no official notification at all,” Reese said. “Anything could happen. It would be strange to broadcast away games off a monitor in a studio. But you know what? The NFL had a boot camp where they would bring in recently retired players who were interested in going into the radio and TV industry. The final exam was to come into NFL Films in Mount Laurel and sit next to me and a couple of other play-by-play broadcasters and do a game together off the monitor. So, I was able to do that. Of course, it wasn’t the same as being at the game but it can still work.”
A source of angst for broadcasters is the use of pre-recorded crowd noise should a minimal amount of spectators be allowed into stadiums.
“I’ve been asked if I think it would help the broadcast if they were to pipe in crowd noise mechanically or prerecorded, which they have, and raise it or lower it depending on the play to make it sound as if you’re broadcasting in a full stadium,” Reese said. “And my answer to that is, I would hope not. I would want whatever I was there broadcasting to be real. I would chronicle the event that I am watching whether it’s on a monitor or in person as it is.”
From a football perspective, life is very different now for Reese. Not being around coaches and players at practices, not having daily interactions with staff and management, has left him feeling empty.
“I miss all of those things,” Reese said. “If that’s the way it has to be, so be it. Everything’s a concern now, not just as a football broadcaster but in a sense all of us. I care first about people’s health. That’s the most important thing to me in this pandemic. I’m in that senior category. I am healthy and I work out regularly. But nobody knows what life has in store for them. We all know that every day in our lives there are things that can happen regardless of what age we are. So I’ll be extremely careful. But (COVID-19) wouldn’t in any way restrict me from doing my job. I will do whatever I am supposed to be doing professionally.”
Reese wears a mask when he’s out in public and urges others to do the same. He takes social distancing seriously. Even when it hurts.
When Reese and his wife Cyndy get together to see their daughter Ida, and grandson Ollie, it’s from six feet away. There are no exceptions.
“I see my daughter and son-in-law and my little grandson but it’s social distance all the way,” Reese said. “No physical contact. Can you tell me one grandparent who has an adorable, 1½-year old that they don’t want to go over and give a great big hug to? One day Ollie walked in my direction and raised his arms for me to pick him up and I couldn’t do it. That’s tough.”
Reese does tough well. He prefers your loyalty, not your sympathy, during this pandemic and is committed to bringing you Eagles football the only way he knows how.
While Reese doesn’t dwell on the body of games he’s called, it’s something people around him marvel at.
Just counting up the games — at the turn it’s 706 — is an accomplishment.
“That’s got to go down with Cal Ripken and Lou Gehrig and Jackie Slater and the streaks they had,” Werndl said of those sports masters of longevity. “In football, that’s an impressive streak. And it doesn’t make any difference if he’s calling the game at home or in a studio for an away game. He’s still doing an Eagles game.”
For Reese, a 44th straight season of Eagles football, no matter the conditions, is a gift to place beside the the others.
“There has never been a day in my life when I didn’t wake up and feel how fortunate I am to be broadcasting the game that I love and to be doing Eagles football,” Reese said. “There has never been a day in my life when I haven’t appreciated it. I have never taken it for granted, not for one minute.”