Troy Aikman’s declaration that he’ll be a free agent after this season read like a farewell note taped to the “Monday Night Football” booth door. Marcellus Wiley, though, chose to read it as an opening bid.
Wiley, a former All-Pro defensive end with the Chargers and a one-time ESPN analyst, said Sunday that the remark means Aikman and ESPN are still at the bargaining table, comparing the situation to Lamar Jackson’s long contract standoff with the Ravens.
Joe Buck, Aikman’s broadcast partner of 25 years, already has a new deal, while Aikman has yet to receive a formal offer.
However, Aikman’s own account of where things stand sounds a lot less like hardball and a lot more like radio silence.
Why Marcellus Wiley Sees a Negotiation Where Troy Aikman Sees None
Aikman spoke Thursday on “96.7 The Ticket” in Dallas, a day after Front Office Sports reported, citing a source, that he and Buck argued before the Bills’ overtime win over the Rams at SoFi Stadium on Oct. 12 amid tension over their respective contract talks. The argument eventually de-escalated, according to the report, and ESPN declined to comment.
Addressing the report, Aikman said there was probably a time and a place for that discussion, though he wasn’t sure now was it. Then he dropped the line that grabbed the headlines.
“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,” Aikman said.
Wiley sees that combination as a tell rather than a goodbye. Putting himself in Aikman’s shoes, he said that even without an offer, Aikman is still under contract and isn’t allowed to talk about where he might be headed next.
“They’re still negotiating. Even without an offer, they’re still negotiating,” Wiley said, adding that fans may be watching “a very public display of a negotiation.”
Wiley’s theory makes room for the missing offer, but Aikman’s own words cut the other way. Later Thursday, Aikman told Jimmy Traina, host of “Traina Thoughts”, that he doesn’t expect to be back at ESPN, saying the network seems to be going in a different direction because there have been no talks and no contract negotiations.
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Aikman noted that the Super Bowl is on Feb. 14 and his contract ends in March, underlining the fact that it doesn’t seem logical that ESPN wouldn’t have something in place before then if it planned to keep him.
Aikman is in the last year of the five-year ESPN deal he signed in 2022, which pays him a reported $18 million a year. The Athletic reported last month that Buck had landed a six-year extension worth more than $100 million.
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Why Wiley Pointed to Lamar Jackson’s Standoff With the Baltimore Ravens
Wiley held up Jackson’s standoff with the Ravens as a case in point, recalling that at one point it looked as if the team simply didn’t like its quarterback.
“And guess what? He didn’t go somewhere else. He stayed in Baltimore. Being through negotiations before, no, nothing matters more than that money,” said Wiley, who played for four NFL teams. “They could buy away your pain and your anxieties and your issues and your sleepless nights and all your talks.”
Jackson’s fight did play out in public. He said he requested a trade on March 2, 2023, and he made the request public on March 27.
A month later, on the first day of the draft, he and the Ravens agreed in principle on a five-year extension reportedly worth $260 million. According to the team, negotiations had been ongoing for about two years by that point.
Aikman, by his own account, hasn’t reached that stage with ESPN. If talks are coming, they may be running on the network’s clock. The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand has reported that ESPN is waiting until the end of the season to open negotiations with Aikman.
That leaves the longest-running broadcast duo in NFL TV headed for ESPN’s first Super Bowl with the big question unanswered: whether the network comes to the table once the confetti falls, or whether Aikman lands somewhere else.
This article originally appeared on Pro Football Network.