Giants vs. Cowboys on 'Thursday Night Football' signifies to Al Michaels that Amazon Prime Video is now a player in NFL scheduling

Al Michaels got the message was soon as he saw Amazon Prime Video’s 2024 NFL slate in May. There it was, listed in Week 4: Cowboys at Giants.

“That was the one that jumped out at me when the schedule came out,” Michaels told Newsday on Monday. “It’s the first thing I looked at.

“I said, ‘Wow, this thing brings us into the scheduling big time.”

Michaels would know, because this will be his 20th prime time Cowboys-Giants game doing play-by-play, first on “Monday Night Football,” then on “Sunday Night Football" and now in his third season on “Thursday Night Football.”

Prime Video’s first year of exclusive Thursday games in 2022 had some clunkers, but the league seems to have made the slot a priority, including a Patriots-Jets game last week. (“That’s the loudest Jets crowd I've ever heard,” Michaels said.)

“This is our best schedule yet,” Prime Video president Jay Marine said when it came out.

Even though both the Giants and Cowboys are 1-2, the fact the Giants won on Sunday and the Cowboys lost adds some juice to a now-pivotal early matchup.

But the brand names endure regardless.

“I'm a veteran of many, many, many Giants-Cowboys games, with some real thrillers,” Michaels said.

“So when I saw that, that told me the league is basically saying, ‘We put a lot of eggs into the Amazon basket. We do understand how important streaming is to us.’”

Michaels said he sensed what was coming when the league put one of its most attractive early playoff matchups last season – Miami at Kansas City – on NBC’s Peacock.

“That showed me that the league now knows: We've got to begin to juice a few things up,” he said. “And they certainly did.”

Prime Video will have its first exclusive NFL playoff game this season.

Michaels lived briefly in North Bellmore between his early childhood in Brooklyn and later teens in Los Angeles. He knows the Giants well, past and present.

“If I’m a Giant fan right now I am excited, and I'm very excited because you’ve got the [Malik] Nabers kid,” he said. “He’s special . . . He’s got that ‘wow’ factor . . . I can’t wait to see him play live.”

Speaking of star rookie receivers, one of Michaels’ most memorable Cowboys-Giants games came at MetLife Stadium 10 years ago: Odell Beckham Jr.’s one-handed catch for a touchdown while falling backward into the end zone.

“That was the first of that [type of] really, really, really high-level, one-handed catch,” Michaels said. “There had been a few, but that's on national television, on ‘Sunday Night Football,’ against the Dallas Cowboys, in New York.”

Michaels called seven Giants-Cowboys games for ABC on Monday nights and 12 for NBC on Sunday nights. Dallas is 14-5 in those games, 5-3 in New Jersey.

There were plenty of big moments in addition to the Beckham catch, like the 1995 opener at Giants Stadium, which the Cowboys won, 35-0.

That night, Cowboys owner Jerry Jones famously stood on the sideline with Nike’s Phil Knight and announced a partnership between their two companies.

In 2009, Michaels was on the call when Eli Manning and the Giants christened the Cowboys’ new stadium with a 33-31 victory.

But there is nothing like the first time.

On Sept. 8, 1986, Michaels made his debut on “Monday Night Football” alongside analyst Frank Gifford for a game at Texas Stadium that the Cowboys won, 31-28, on a late, 10-yard touchdown run by Herschel Walker, who was making his NFL debut.

The Giants went 17-1 after that night and won Super Bowl XXI.

Michaels was well known by 1986, but he still was surprised to get the Monday night gig from new ABC Sports president Dennis Swanson. Prior to Swanson’s arrival, the Monday night team had been Frank Gifford, Joe Namath and O.J. Simpson.

“When I did that first game, I was extremely nervous, because here it is, ‘Monday Night Football,’” Michaels said. “Wow! That's the show. Number one. That's it.”

It was No. 1 for Michaels in more ways than one. No. 20 comes on Thursday.

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.