ESPN NFL Analyst — NFL Live, Get Up & First Take

Dan Orlovsky's Apple Watch: The Most Viral Safety in NFL History Built the Best Second Career in the Business

Twelve seasons. Twelve starts. A blooper play from 2008 that circulates on social media several times a day and never goes away. When he retired in 2017, Dan Orlovsky was considering medical sales. His wife told him to try broadcasting instead. He joined ESPN in 2018, signed a multi-year extension in July 2025, and is now one of the most respected football analysts on television. On his wrist: an Apple Watch.

Dan Orlovsky — Apple Watch on wrist. Source: ESPN

Dan Orlovsky — ESPN analyst, NFL Live, Get Up, First Take, college football broadcasts

Daniel John Orlovsky was born August 18, 1983, in Bridgeport, Connecticut, and grew up in Shelton. He played college football at the University of Connecticut, where he finished as the most prolific passer in programme history — over 10,000 passing yards and 84 touchdowns — including 33 touchdown passes as a junior that ranked seventh in all of NCAA Division I-A. The Detroit Lions selected him in the fifth round of the 2005 NFL Draft, 145th overall. He spent the next twelve years in professional football, mostly watching from the sideline.

Orlovsky made 12 starts across that entire career — appearing for the Lions across three separate stints, the Houston Texans, Indianapolis Colts, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and Los Angeles Rams. His most significant stretch of starts came during the Lions' 0–16 season in 2008, when he started seven games on one of the worst teams in NFL history. His first career start, on October 12, 2008, produced a competent line — 12 of 21 passes, 150 yards, one touchdown — and one moment that has not left him since. Late in the game, scrambling to his right under pressure near his own end zone, Orlovsky ran out of the back of the end zone before releasing the ball. The officials signalled a safety. Detroit lost 12–10. The clip now circulates on social media, by Orlovsky's own count, several times a day. He has learned to laugh about it, which tells you something important about who he is.

He retired on October 11, 2017, after being released by the Rams in final cuts. With four children and a career to rebuild, he began looking into medical sales. His wife Tiffany steered him toward broadcasting instead. He joined ESPN in 2018, appeared on NFL Live beginning in 2019, and by June 2020 had become a consistent daily presence on the show. He now appears on NFL Live, Get Up, First Take, SportsCenter, and calls a weekly ESPN/ABC college football game each autumn. In May 2022 he joined ESPN's number-two NFL game crew alongside Steve Levy and Louis Riddick. In July 2025, he signed a multi-year contract extension to remain at ESPN — a commitment from the network that the backup quarterback nobody noticed has become one of the analysts everyone watches.

"Someone married that person." — Dan Orlovsky, laughing on the set of Get Up on the 15th anniversary of the safety, when asked about his haircut that day

Timepiece

Apple Watch

The Apple Watch, now in its tenth generation and the world's best-selling watch by a significant margin, is the device that handles the practical demands of a working day without requiring deliberate attention. The current lineup — Series 11, SE, and Ultra — all share the same core function: continuous health monitoring, wrist-level communications, and ecosystem integration, running passively while the wearer focuses elsewhere. For someone appearing across multiple ESPN shows daily, travelling for game broadcasts each weekend in the autumn, and raising four children, the watch that does the most without demanding the most is the practical choice.

Health and fitness tracking — heart rate, steps, workouts, ECG, blood oxygen, sleep — runs continuously, building a picture of physical state across the full day. Notifications and messages arrive at the glance rather than the reach, keeping a broadcast professional hands-free in the moments before and during live television. Apple Pay handles transactions without a wallet. Navigation delivers haptic directions on the wrist in unfamiliar cities. Music and podcast control manages audio without a phone in hand. Timers and stopwatch keep preparation structured. It is, taken together, the infrastructure of a managed working day worn on the wrist — exactly what a former backup quarterback running a second career at full speed has learned to build.

Platform	Apple Watch (watchOS) — paired with iPhone
Models	Series 11 / SE / Ultra — aluminium, stainless steel, or titanium
Health	Heart rate, ECG, blood oxygen, sleep tracking, fall & crash detection
Connectivity	Calls, messages, notifications, Apple Pay — hands-free on wrist
Navigation	GPS with haptic turn-by-turn directions
Convenience	Music & podcast control, timers, Siri, Mac unlock, Apple Pay
Software	watchOS — over-the-air updates, continuously improving
Price range	From ~$249 (SE) to ~$799+ (Ultra)

The Backup Who Became the Analyst

There is a specific kind of intelligence that develops in backup quarterbacks who last twelve seasons without ever securing a starting role. They watch more film than the starters. They understand the game from the sideline — not the centre of it — which means they see things that the people in the middle of the action cannot. They are rarely the most physically gifted players on the roster, which means their survival depends entirely on preparation, intelligence, and the ability to communicate what they know to the coaches who evaluate them each week. Dan Orlovsky spent twelve years becoming very good at understanding football and explaining it clearly. He just happened to be doing it inside a facility rather than on television.

What distinguishes him at ESPN is precisely that backup's perspective: the film breakdowns are granular, the position-specific knowledge is genuine, and the self-awareness is disarming. He does not pretend the safety never happened. He laughs about it with the crew on the anniversary, makes the obvious joke, and moves on. That combination — deep football knowledge, willingness to be the object of the joke, genuine warmth — is exactly what makes him watchable across six different ESPN programmes simultaneously. He has the long-term contract to show it.

The Second Career That Almost Wasn't

When Orlovsky retired in October 2017 with four children and no immediate plan, his first thought was medical sales — a stable, respectable pivot for a former professional athlete with no broadcasting experience and no particular reason to expect he would be good at it. His wife Tiffany told him to try television instead. That nudge is worth noting. The Apple Watch on his wrist at ESPN is on the wrist of someone whose second career began because someone who knew him well saw something in him that the twelve seasons on NFL sidelines had not made obvious. He is now one of the faces of the network's NFL coverage, with a multi-year extension, four shows, and a weekly game broadcast every autumn. The backup who ran out of the end zone in 2008 is, by any reasonable measure, winning the second half of the game.

More Apple Watch Spots on Spot.Watch

And at Spot.Watch — that's always worth noticing.

Spot.Watch Articles about Timepieces