NBC cut the national anthem from Sunday Night Football three days before Veterans Day, and nobody at the network is explaining why
NBC skipped 'The Star-Spangled Banner' before the Bears-Buccaneers game at Soldier Field, aired Carrie Underwood's show theme instead, and went silent when reporters asked why. The timing, during the NFL's own Salute to Service week, made it impossible to ignore.
In brief
On the night of November 9, 2026, with Veterans Day three days away and the NFL in the middle of its annual Salute to Service campaign, NBC's Sunday Night Football broadcast cut from the booth introduction straight to a pregame interview, and never showed "The Star-Spangled Banner." The anthem was performed at Soldier Field. Millions of viewers watching the Chicago Bears host the Tampa Bay Buccaneers never heard a note of it. NBC has not said why.
The omission landed hard, and fast. Social media noticed within minutes, and by Monday morning the story had accumulated 50,000 or more Google searches under the query "nbc sunday night football anthem omitted." The timing did everything to amplify the blowback: Salute to Service weekend, a game at Soldier Field, and a network that chose to run Carrie Underwood's show theme in place of the national one.
What actually happened before kickoff
After NBC's booth introduction featuring analyst Cris Collinsworth and play-by-play man Noah Eagle, all audiences saw was a pregame interview with Bears quarterback Caleb Williams before an aerial view of the field appeared on screen. Then, an aerial shot showed flag bearers carrying a folded, field-sized American flag back into a stadium tunnel, and the broadcast did not include the national anthem.
It did air the "show anthem" featuring Carrie Underwood, and covered the trade of defensive tackle Jeffery Simmons to the Bears. The anthem that wasn't missing from television was, by all accounts, present at the stadium itself. According to a Getty Images photo caption published by Yahoo Sports, the anthem was performed live at Soldier Field.
The Bears even had a Salute to Service nominee on the roster. The Chicago Bears announced that defensive back and special teams standout Josh Blackwell has been named the team's nominee for the 2026 Salute to Service Award presented by USAA. The annual award recognizes NFL players, coaches, staff, and alumni who demonstrate an exceptional commitment to supporting U.S. service members, veterans, and their families. Blackwell's nomination was part of a game-day package the team built around military appreciation. None of that made air before kickoff either.
Who made this call, and why won't they say?
This is the question that matters most, and the answer is: nobody at NBC is talking.
OutKick contacted NBC executive vice president of communications Greg Hughes and senior vice president of communications Chris McCloskey to ask why the national anthem was omitted from the broadcast. Neither responded publicly as of Monday morning.
The decision to broadcast the national anthem is not generally made by the NFL. It is not a club decision. It is a network decision. So this is apparently an editorial decision at NBC.
That matters because it rules out the most convenient explanations. The league didn't tell them to skip it. The Bears didn't ask them to. Someone in NBC's production chain decided that the anthem would not appear in the pregame window, and that person or group has not stepped forward to explain the reasoning. OutKick, which broke the story, speculated that NBC may have wanted to avoid all possibilities of offending anyone by not televising the national anthem altogether. If that was the calculation, it produced the opposite result.
The context that made it worse
Timing is everything in these situations. This was not a random week in October.
NBC's Sunday Night Football broadcast skipped the national anthem before the Chicago Bears game at Soldier Field during the NFL's Salute to Service campaign week, three days shy of Veterans Day.
Through Salute to Service, USAA, the NFL, and its 32 clubs honor, empower, and connect with service members, veterans, and their families year-round. During Weeks 9 through 11 of the regular season, clubs recognize the military community through on-field branding, military appreciation activities, and other game day events.
The Bears had announced "special tributes, in-game recognitions and themed elements" for Sunday's game. "Salute to Service brings our entire league together around that commitment," said Anna Isaacson, the NFL's senior vice president of social responsibility, in a statement announcing the campaign.
The NFL had also committed television time to the campaign. The league said NBC would air a one-hour Salute to Service special on Nov. 21. So the same network that agreed to dedicate a full hour to honoring veterans in two weeks cut the national anthem on the week the campaign launched.
This is not the first anthem story at Soldier Field this season
The Bears have had a complicated relationship with pregame anthem coverage in 2026. On September 28, Mariachi Herencia de Mexico performed an instrumental mariachi version of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at Soldier Field before the Bears' Monday Night Football game on ESPN/ABC, as part of the team's Hispanic Heritage Month "Vamos Bears" celebration.
That performance drew mixed reactions at the time. Some celebrated it as a genuine expression of the team's fan base. Others objected to the stylistic departure. The Bears defended the decision as an intentional cultural celebration. That story moved in a few days. This one feels different, because the anthem wasn't reinterpreted. It was simply absent from the broadcast.
And there is a third layer: what was not met with mixed reaction was injured Bears quarterback Caleb Williams shown pacing along the sideline while the anthem was being played. Williams, who has been dealing with a hamstring injury, was visible on the field during the in-stadium ceremony. Some viewers found footage of his casual movement during the anthem distracting when it circulated afterward, a minor point that added noise to an already loud news cycle.
Mike Tirico's absence added to an already unusual night
The anthem wasn't the only thing missing from the broadcast. The man who normally calls Sunday Night Football wasn't there either.
NBC "Sunday Night Football" play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico said Sunday afternoon he will miss the game between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers at Chicago Bears due to "a health issue." Tirico, 59, did not specify the health issue that would force him to miss Sunday night's game.
Sunday night in Chicago was supposed to be Mike Tirico's 300th NFL broadcast. He will have to wait a week for that milestone. Tirico said he will be back for Week 10's Steelers-Bengals game, his 300th NFL broadcast.
Tirico has never missed working a "Sunday Night Football" game since taking over for Al Michaels in 2022. He even notably still called a game in 2024 after tearing his Achilles tendon. So a last-minute absence from him is genuinely unusual.
Noah Eagle filled in on play-by-play alongside analyst Cris Collinsworth and reporter Melissa Stark. Eagle had called Notre Dame vs. Miami in South Bend on Saturday night, which likely made him the easiest choice to fill in for Tirico on the fly, given his proximity to Chicago.
Tirico does have a reported health history that includes a nut allergy, which caused a severe allergic reaction during the 2025 Kentucky Derby broadcast. He also suffered a torn Achilles that he disclosed while calling Sunday Night Football in November 2024. Neither NBC nor Tirico disclosed what the current issue is.
Sunday Night Football's standing makes this hard to wave off
If this happened on a mid-afternoon regional broadcast, it would barely register. It happened on the highest-rated program on American television most weeks of the year.
NBC's "Sunday Night Football" broadcast is often the highest-rated show on television, and the lead-up to the game before kickoff more or less marks the beginning of the broadcast, so it was noticeable when Sunday night's broadcast skipped the national anthem.
NBC Sunday Night Football is an American weekly broadcast of National Football League games on NBC and Peacock. Its pregame window, "Football Night in America," typically draws several million viewers on its own before the game begins. The anthem slot, brief as it is, represents the moment the broadcast transitions from analysis to ceremony. Skipping it isn't invisible on a show of that scale.
The NFL's own media rights structure reinforces how unusual this is. The decision to broadcast the national anthem is not generally made by the NFL. It is not a club decision. Every time the anthem has caused controversy in NFL broadcasts, from the kneeling debates of 2016 to 2020, networks have made active, deliberate choices about how to handle it. Sometimes they cut away. Sometimes they show the ceremony prominently. Sometimes they avoid the whole thing by going to commercial. Those are all editorial choices with predictable consequences. This one had an unpredictable one.
The Bears were winning, for context
The game itself, whatever you thought of the pregame broadcast, was meaningful. The Bears (6-2) were seeking their fourth straight win and sixth victory in their last seven games Sunday night when they hosted the Buccaneers (3-5) at Soldier Field. Chicago has had a strong first half of the season. Buccaneers quarterback was out with a hip injury, putting Jameis Winston in the lineup. So the football had real stakes on its own. The anthem story swallowed the postgame conversation anyway.
What the NFL's Salute to Service campaign actually is
It is worth being precise about what the NFL was asking its broadcast partners to honor this week, because the gap between that stated mission and NBC's actual broadcast is the core of the controversy.
The NFL Salute to Service Award presented by USAA honors players, coaches, staff, and alumni who demonstrate an exceptional commitment to supporting U.S. service members, veterans, and military families. The campaign runs across Weeks 9 through 11 each season, with every team participating in military appreciation events at their home games. It is one of the league's highest-profile goodwill programs.
The Bears were nominated for the award, the Buccaneers were nominated for the award, and the game between those two teams on the country's most-watched sports broadcast was the centerpiece of the campaign's opening week. The anthem, in that context, was not a minor procedural formality. It was part of the ceremony the league had built the week around.
No apology, no explanation, no statement
As of Monday morning, NBC had issued nothing. No statement from the network, no comment from the production team, no on-air acknowledgment during or after the game. Viewers have apparently noticed "The Star-Spangled Banner's" absence, at least some on social media.
The silence is itself a choice. Networks have issued rapid clarifications over far smaller on-air errors. A spokesperson saying "we made a production error" or "we made a deliberate decision for the following reason" would at minimum give the public something to evaluate. The absence of any response means the story stays open-ended, which tends to generate more speculation, not less.
OutKick, which first reported the omission, reached both of NBC's top communications executives and got nothing back. That's not a clerical miss. Greg Hughes is executive vice president of communications at NBC. Chris McCloskey is senior vice president. Both were contacted directly. Both went quiet.
What NBC airs next Sunday night, before Tirico's milestone 300th NFL broadcast in Cincinnati, will draw more scrutiny than any pregame slot would normally receive. Whether "The Star-Spangled Banner" appears on that broadcast, and how the network handles the ceremony, will tell viewers more about what happened November 9 than anything NBC has said so far.
Rodriquez Wright II is founder and editor-in-chief of Washington DC Magazine and founder of Leo Operations. Photographer, filmmaker, strategist and recording artist. NABJ member.
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CAN I KICK IT? screens New Jack City at the Sylvan Theater, Washington Monument, on Aug. 22. (Courtesy SHAOLIN JAZZ)
The live-cinema series CAN I KICK IT? returns to the National Mall this month with what its producers are calling the "Gangsters on the Mall" chapter of their free outdoor summer run. On Saturday, August 22, the SHAOLIN JAZZ production brings the 1991 crime classic New Jack City to the Sylvan Theater at the Washington Monument for a night of film, music, and community under the DC summer sky.
What sets the event apart is the sound. As the film plays, DJ 2-Tone Jones builds an original score in real time, reimagining one of the most iconic crime movies of the ’90s through hip-hop, soul, funk, and more. It is less a movie screening than a live performance built around the film.
The details:
Film: New Jack City (1991), with a live soundtrack by DJ 2-Tone Jones
When: Saturday, August 22 — seating opens at 7:30 p.m. (bring lawn chairs and blankets); film begins at 8:30 p.m.
Where: Sylvan Theater at the Washington Monument, Independence Ave SW & 15th St NW
A parking note from the organizers: expect road closures and restricted parking east of 14th Street NW due to a separate race event in the District. Roads west of 14th Street NW will be accessible and available for parking.
New Jack City is the second of three screenings in this year’s free CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series, which opened with Black Panther at Skyland Town Center and concludes with Scarface at the Lincoln Memorial on September 5. Produced by the Washington, DC-based multimedia arts company SHAOLIN JAZZ, the series has presented more than 150 live cinematic experiences at venues across the country, from Lincoln Center to SXSW.
"I wanted to be able to tell good stories with substance and remove the ‘ego’ out of the art," said Andrew Huang during a recent interview. Now, he’s building his career at the intersection of discipline, creativity and innovation.
Andrew Huang, founder of New Place Studios. (Courtesy photo)
As a Chinese American, Huang was reared with a deep respect for hard work, consistency and excellence. He describes his childhood as "not so affluent" and later attended college to hone his passion for videography. "In college I tried to do something I loved, which was video, but along the way I knew that I had to find a job. And so I thought, ‘what was the low hanging fruit to get to that stable 9 to 5 job?,’" he stated.
Later in life, Huang found himself working for corporations where his creativity was often limited, eventually leading to burnout. "I worked in a corporation for a long time and there were a lot of missing pieces. I wanted to fill in gaps missing in corporate video production," said Huang.
He later described how his upbringing and a mindset of "survival" led him toward a corporate career. However, his desire for balance and authentic storytelling ultimately pushed him to take the entrepreneurial leap.
"I founded a new place where you can create video and film with ‘substance and style,’" said Huang. His desire for work-life balance and passion for storytelling naturally evolved into a small business based in Virginia. With the launch of New Place Studios, the entrepreneur quickly found himself reconnecting with the values that would become the foundation of everything he creates behind the camera.
Huang said being a business owner has allowed him to first embrace himself. While others may see video as simply capturing moments, he sees it as a way to preserve stories that inspire, connect and leave a lasting imprint.
By combining cinematic visuals with cutting-edge production techniques and a keen understanding of branding, Huang helps organizations and individuals communicate their vision with purpose. He said understanding a client’s "why" serves as the compass for delivering the services they need.
One benefit of working with a small business, he said, is that clients get to see the production process unfold through a micro lens while working with the same faces throughout the entire project. "The work feels personal," said Huang.
Huang does not regret leaving behind the flash-over-substance mentality and corporate hustle culture. That does not mean the Asian American entrepreneur has been without challenges in the industry. "It’s relatively hard to find other Asian American creatives or people who would want to work with me in the DMV," said Huang.
He identifies the industry culture in which everyone is trying to blend in, creatives may fear displaying their Asian identity and some feel pressure to adopt an American corporate persona. He also points to what he describes as a level of gatekeeping within the industry. According to the U.S. Small Business Administration’s 2024 statistics, Asian American and Pacific Islander entrepreneurs own more than 3 million businesses and employ 5.2 million people in the United States.
After tapping into organizations such as SCORE, which offers free small business mentorship, New Place Studios has become a trusted creative partner throughout the DMV (Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia). The company produces a range of creative services, including commercials, corporate branding, documentaries, film, 2D animation, motion graphics and photography.
For Huang, entrepreneurship has become more than a departure from corporate life. It has given him the freedom to create with intention, build meaningful connections and tell stories that go beyond the surface.
The 2026 CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series. Poster courtesy of SHAOLIN JAZZ.
For three Saturdays this summer, some of Washington’s most familiar public spaces will do something they rarely do after dark: fill up with blankets, lawn chairs, and the sound of a movie being scored live, in real time. CAN I KICK IT?, the traveling “live cinema” series produced by the DC-based multimedia arts company SHAOLIN JAZZ, is bringing a free outdoor run to the city — pairing three era-defining films with an original soundtrack performed on the spot by DJ 2-Tone Jones.
The premise is what sets it apart from a normal screening in the park. Rather than simply pressing play, 2-Tone Jones builds a score as the film unfolds, pulling from hip-hop, soul, funk, jazz, rock, electronic music, and sounds from around the world. The result, the organizers say, is less a movie night than a one-time performance — the same film you know, wired to a soundtrack you have never heard and will not hear again. Guest DJs warm up the crowd starting at 7:30 PM before each 8:30 PM screening.
The 2026 outdoor schedule
All three events are free and open to the public.
Saturday, August 8 — Black Panther at Skyland Town Center. A pop-up marketplace and community activities kick off the evening; guest DJs at 7:30 PM, film at 8:30 PM. Marvel’s superhero epic gets a one-night-only live score in Southeast DC.
Saturday, August 22 — New Jack City at the Sylvan Theater, Washington Monument. Seating begins at 7:30 PM; the film starts at 8:30 PM. The 1991 crime drama plays out at the foot of one of the country’s most recognizable landmarks.
Saturday, September 5 — Scarface at the Lincoln Memorial. Seating at 7:30 PM; film at 8:30 PM. The series closes with Brian De Palma’s crime saga against the backdrop of the Memorial, scored live from start to finish.
First up: Black Panther at Skyland Town Center on August 8. Poster courtesy of SHAOLIN JAZZ.
A DC company with a national footprint
SHAOLIN JAZZ describes itself as a Washington-based arts company working at the intersection of music, film, art, and culture, and CAN I KICK IT? is its signature production. According to the organizers, the series has staged more than 150 live cinematic experiences around the country — at performing arts centers, museums, festivals, and cultural institutions including Lincoln Center in New York, SXSW, the Denver Center for the Performing Arts, Republic Square in Austin, the Tacoma Armory, and The Cary Theater.
“CAN I KICK IT? has always been about creating a shared experience,” said Gerald Watson, co-founder of SHAOLIN JAZZ. “When you combine iconic films with live music in public spaces, something special happens. People aren’t just watching a movie — they’re experiencing it together. That’s what makes these nights so memorable.”
Cinema as a community event
The DC run lands as cities across the country look for new ways to activate public space through arts and culture — and this series is a straightforward pitch for how to do it: take a landmark everyone already knows, add a film everyone has an opinion about, and let a live soundtrack turn the evening into something neighbors experience shoulder to shoulder. Families, film buffs, and music fans are all invited, and admission won’t cost a thing.
The CAN I KICK IT? outdoor series runs August 8, August 22, and September 5. All events are free; check SHAOLIN JAZZ (shaolinjazz.com) for the latest details and any weather updates before heading out.
