Upon NBC's assumption of the Sunday prime time game rights, Al Michaels, John Madden, Fred Gaudelli, and Drew Esocoff, who served as the respective play-by-play announcer, color commentator, lead producer, and director, joined SNF in the same positions they held during the latter portion of the ABC era of Monday Night Football.

Maria Taylor, Chris Simms, Jason Garrett, Devin McCourty, Mike Florio, and Matthew Berry broadcast from the studio while Jac Collinsworth, Tony Dungy, and Rodney Harrison report from the game.

Both the Packers and the Chiefs have a baseball team in their respective home states (Wisconsin's Milwaukee Brewers made the postseason but lost to the eventual World Series Champion Nationals in the NL Wild Card Game, and Missouri's Kansas City Royals, failed to make the playoffs for the fourth consecutive season).

Ultimately, it was decided to keep the rematch in the Sunday night slot due to the Steelers making a late playoff push, the team's fanbase that provides high ratings regardless of how well the Steelers are doing, as well as a lack of compelling match-ups for the week, with only two other pairings that did not have a team with a losing record by the flex deadline (Patriots at Miami Dolphins and Baltimore Ravens at Detroit Lions, the latter being a Monday night game which could not be flexed out of its slot).

[32] John Ourand of SportsBusiness Journal reported that the league wanted to keep the total number of games taken from CBS and Fox, dating back to the start of the current television contracts, roughly equal.

Otherwise, an obscure rule in the broadcast contracts would have prevented the league from possibly flexing a Week 17 AFC game, originally scheduled to be televised on CBS, to the final Sunday night slot.

The final game of the 2013 NFL regular season was played on December 29, 2013, between the Philadelphia Eagles and Dallas Cowboys to determine the NFC East division champion while the loser was eliminated.

[43][44] On December 21, 2014, the NFL announced that the rivalry game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Cincinnati Bengals would be flexed into the Week 17 Sunday Night Football slot, with the winner clinching the AFC North.

With the aforementioned Week 16 matchup between the Broncos and the Chiefs already being scheduled for Christmas night (December 25), that was the second time that NBC has shown both meetings of division rivals during a regular season.

ET time-slots between CBS and Fox (equivalent to soccer's English Premier League scheduling their last week's matches in the same manner), and no Sunday Night Football game would be played for the first time since 2009.

The aforementioned Packers–Saints game took place while the 2020 Stanley Cup Finals (rescheduled from its normal late May–early June schedule) were ongoing; Dallas (Stars) and Tampa Bay (Lightning) also have NFL teams in the Cowboys and Buccaneers.

In Week 7, the game between the Seattle Seahawks and Arizona Cardinals was flexed into the Sunday night slot from 4:05 p.m., trading places with the scheduled matchup between the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Las Vegas Raiders.

In Week 14, the NFL announced a scheduling change that flexed out a rivalry game between the Kansas City Chiefs and the Denver Broncos in favor of the Miami Dolphins and the Los Angeles Chargers.

Al Michaels' lone appearance on NBC throughout the season came during the 2022 AFC Wild Card game between the Los Angeles Chargers and the Jacksonville Jaguars, alongside Tony Dungy and Kaylee Hartung.

Jason Garrett joined the Thanksgiving broadcast alongside Mike Tirico and Melissa Stark, with Cris Collinsworth opting to work the Sunday night game between the San Francisco 49ers and the Buffalo Bills later that week.

For Super Bowl XLIII, NBC commissioned Joel Beckerman[68] of Man Made Music to create new instrumental cues adding techno and rock elements around the main brass melody.

The intro was lampooned in the October 9, 2010, episode of Saturday Night Live, with host Jane Lynch as Hill (with Jason Sudeikis as Al Michaels and Bill Hader as Cris Collinsworth).

[77][78] In the 30 Rock episode "Season 4", the character of Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) sings what appears to be an allusion to the Faith Hill intro for NBC's fictional Tennis Night in America[79][80] program.

[83] A new Carrie Underwood-sung theme known as "Oh, Sunday Night", which takes elements from her 2014 duet hit with Miranda Lambert, "Somethin' Bad", premiered with the opening game of the 2016 season on September 11.

In 2018, Underwood, along with songwriters Chris DeStefano and Brett James, wrote and recorded a brand new song for SNF, called "Game On", replacing "Oh, Sunday Night," which had been the opening theme since 2016.

For the first season, Pink appeared to sing from the top of a skyscraper as a helicopter zoomed down on a city skyline with enlarged players Shaun Alexander, LaDainian Tomlinson and Tom Brady and the field, the results of computer-generated imagery.

Faith Hill, who replaced Pink as the theme song's performer, sang on a stage while some of the key players in the game and announcers Al Michaels and John Madden arrived in limousines and walk on a red carpet as they head to a simulated theater.

For 2009, Hill appeared in the intro sequence performed in a closed-studio setting, surrounded by video monitors, neon lights and a message board that displayed the names of the production staff.

Hill herself drove down a road with some simulated billboards with the opening credits and a product placement ad for Verizon (which replaced Sprint as the league's telecommunications sponsor) and was also seen at the Washington Monument.

Initially, the stars presented were Aaron Rodgers (Green Bay Packers), Clay Matthews (Packers), Ray Lewis (Baltimore Ravens), Patrick Willis (San Francisco 49ers), Jimmy Graham (New Orleans Saints), DeMarcus Ware (Dallas Cowboys), Calvin Johnson (Detroit Lions), Larry Fitzgerald (Arizona Cardinals), Jared Allen (Minnesota Vikings), Rob Gronkowski (New England Patriots), Darrelle Revis (New York Jets) and Eli Manning (New York Giants).

Some of the NFL stars that were represented in the opening were Philip Rivers (San Diego Chargers), Luke Kuechly (Carolina Panthers), DeMarcus Ware (Broncos), Clay Matthews (Packers), Brandon Marshall (Chicago Bears), Jimmy Graham (Saints), LeSean McCoy (Eagles) and Colin Kaepernick (49ers).

As previously mentioned, she teamed with rock music legend Joan Jett for the return of the original SNF opening theme song, "Waiting All Day For Sunday Night."

Underwood did make a cameo in the commercial, singing a parody of her hit song "Before He Cheats" related to The Blind Side (acting as if it was a musical), with the title line being changed to "Maybe next time he'll beg before he calls a sneak".

For this season, an updated version of "Waiting All Day for Sunday Night" is used, with the intro consisting of a concert performance interspersed with augmented reality highlights displayed on a halo scoreboard similar to that of SoFi Stadium in Inglewood as well as a yet unnamed surprise element.

NBC's game telecasts use the same type of horizontal bottom-screen scoreboard that Monday Night Football used in the 2005 NFL season (and was subsequently used by ABC Sports until its rebranding in August 2006).