Eagle's analyst is Dan Fouts.
I pretty much assumed that CBS would send Gumbel and Dierdorf to call the Patriots' game. All season long CBS has used Peyton Manning as their primary tool to hype and promote their broadcasts, and along with it that means sending their top broadcast team (Nantz and Simms) to cover those games. We knew Dierdorf was in his final year, so it was highly unlikely that they would drop him and Gumbel to number three (i.e., no playoff game) now when they hadn't done that all season long.
For what it's worth, this is how CBS announced their broadcasting crews in a press release before the season began. Although they did not say it was their ranking of the teams, implicitly that's exactly what it was. Their top crew gets their biggest game with the largest audience each week, the second crew gets the second biggest game, etc.
- Jim Nantz, Phil Simms
- Greg Gumbel, Dan Dierdorf
- Ian Eagle, Dan Fouts
- Marv Albert, Rich Gannon
- Kevin Harlan, Solomon Wilcots
- Bill Macatee, Steve Tasker
- Spero Dedes, Steve Beuerlein
I would assume that next year Gumbel remains the play-by-play announcer for CBS' number two crew, but who will be his sidekick? CBS could take one of their in-studio guys such as Boomer Esiason to take over Dierdorf's spot; finding another in-studio analyst shouldn't be that big a deal.
Another option would be to gave Fouts work with Gumbel, but I don't think they want to mess with breaking up broadcasting teams.
A third possibility would be to make Eagle and Fouts their number two team, but that somehow seems very unfair to Gumbel; first he had to put up with working with Dierdorf for years, and then when Dierdorf finally leaves he gets a demotion.
