[2] For its first two seasons, the program was originally hosted by Joel Klatt; former NFL players Randy Moss, Brian Urlacher and Donovan McNabb served as analysts, providing previews and prognostications for the day's game slate and reviewing any games held earlier that week.

Executives with the sports division cited the preference to provide a stronger lead-in for Fox NFL Sunday (despite its position as the highest-rated NFL pre-game show for its entire 21-year history to that point, with the show averaging 4.9 million viewers during the 2014 season, an increase of 2% from 2013) and by effect, result in higher initial ratings for the network’s early afternoon game telecasts.

[10][11] In part because of the relative lateness of the announcement, Fox stations in markets totaling about 10% of the U.S. (such as WFLD in Chicago, KTVU in San Francisco, KCPQ in Seattle, WVUE-DT in New Orleans, and WBFF in Baltimore) have declined to air Fox NFL Kickoff since due to existing programming commitments, specifically those to locally produced pre-game shows for local NFL franchises (either "official" team-produced or unofficial productions) that have led into Fox NFL Sunday prior to the move of Kickoff to Fox or to fulfill educational and informational programming requirements, or moved it to a secondary subchannel, as WITI in Milwaukee did, moving it to their Antenna TV subchannel.

[12] WITI and KCPQ began to carry it in the 2020 season on their main channels after coming under direct Fox ownership.

This includes a number of fairly large markets such as Salt Lake City and New Orleans (the latter devoting its morning to Saints pre-game programming).