In Week 2, Al Michaels will call the first game at yet another stadium
On September 17, the legendary Al Michaels will call the first game at yet another stadium, when the Bills christen their new home against the Lions. It will be the ninth time Michaels has cut the ribbon on a new venue. “This was a game Amazon really pushed for because it would be so cool to open a stadium, and it’s also another Zelig moment for me," Michaels told Richard Deitsch of Sports Business Journal .
"In my career at NBC and at Disney, I did the regular season opener in Foxboro [Gillette Stadium]. It was John Madden and I and that was our first game together. We opened up the Linc in Philadelphia.
We did the first game in Dallas at Jerry World. I did the first game when they refurbished Soldier Field in Chicago. I did the first regular season game at Levi’s Stadium.
And Chris Collinsworth and I opened up SoFi Stadium in 2020, the pandemic year. It was Dallas at the Rams with no fans. " There will be plenty of fans in the building for the first true Thursday night game of 2026.
(Unless hantavirus becomes a thing. Or Ebola. ) “We know how passionate that fan base is in Buffalo and they’ve been able to weather through, in a manner of speaking, all of those years at what used to be Rich Stadium," Michaels said.