ARLINGTON, Texas — As soon as Los Angeles Chargers coach Brandon Staley mentioned it, Melissa Stark knew who she’d call.
“He said he felt Tua Tagavailoa had a lot of similarities to Kurt Warner’s game,” Stark, NBC’s Sunday Night Football sideline reporter, said. “So as soon as I left that production meeting, I called Kurt and was like, ‘Do you see similarities?’”
Warner, the Pro Football Hall of Fame quarterback, confirmed: “He’s the most similar one I see to me in terms of anticipation. That’s his superpower.”
And thus, Stark had a nugget ready to deliver on the broadcast of the Chargers’ visit to the Miami Dolphins last Sunday.
Just like she’d had a nugget ready when Kansas City Chiefs running back Isiah Pacheco told her he’d modeled his game after Hall of Famer LaDainian Tomlinson — “Did you know this?” she called Tomlinson to ask next — and a nugget when Cowboys All-Pro linebacker Micah Parsons mentioned he missed high school as the defensive star pined for chances to play on offense also. Stark reached out to Parsons’ high school coach to hear more.
Such is the ethos of Stark, whom NBC hired this offseason in shuffling the sideline responsibilities of TV’s No. 1 primetime show for the first time in 11 years. Stark and play-by-play announcer Mike Tirico joined color analyst Cris Collinsworth this offseason as the entrance of Amazon into the NFL game broadcast space shook up the sports media landscape and siphoned away Al Michaels, the longtime voice of Sunday Night Football.
In some ways, the 49-year-old mother of four teenagers brought decades of training to this position. Stark had worked for ESPN, NFL Network, the TODAY show and NBC’s Olympics broadcast team, her reporting ranging from live news to documentary features. From 2000-2002, Stark was even ABC’s Monday Night Football sideline reporter alongside Michaels and John Madden. And with NFL Network since 2011, her responsibilities have included draft prospect interviews.
NBC valued that.
And Stark, despite knowing “as a mom, you only get one shot to do your job and do it right,” saw opportunity. With her husband Mike on board, she’d figure out how to balance it all, even while continuing in an NFL Network role.
“You did it at 26 and now here you are a mom of four being offered this opportunity,” her husband, Mike, said in the spring, encouraging her to accept the gig despite four straight months of weekend travel.
Three months in, she’s consistently reinvented the balance. She live-streamed 17-year-old Jackson’s high school football championship game before the Cowboys took on the Indianapolis Colts on Dec. 4, and is stepping up her nursing game as 19-year-old Mikey rehabilitates from knee surgery.
She brought 15-year-old daughter Clemmie to work for a game in San Francisco, and Clemmie and twin Clara both are set to join their mother in Arizona for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ Sunday night game at the Arizona Cardinals, mom on the sideline and daughters in the production truck basking in the high-energy operation.
Stark was closer to their age than her own when she first joined Monday Night Football’s sideline team, leaving after the 2002 season while pregnant with Mikey. She was unsure if she’d ever get another opportunity on the sidelines.
Twenty years later, she is.
“It’s amazing,” Stark said, “for it to all come full circle.”
‘I’m a reporter at heart’
Just before 5:15 p.m. local time on Dec. 4, Stark climbs the steps into the NBC Sunday Night Football production truck parked inside the Cowboys’ AT&T Stadium tunnel. She clutches the blue clipboard featuring her study guide for the Cowboys-Colts game that will kick off in just over two hours. Depth charts, medical information and her usual assortment of potentially relevant storylines span the papers atop the clipboard.
“I have 10 to 12 stories that are prepared based on the game,” Stark explains. “Two of them are going to make (the broadcast). The worst is when you absolutely love them and after the game, it’s like, grr.”
Overreporting is part of Stark’s job responsibility. Overpreparing is part of her mental makeup.
This attention to detail is on full display during this pre-production meeting in the truck, led by Sunday Night Football coordinating producer Rob Hyland. More than two dozen screens surround this meeting “room,” pregame warmups, pre-queued footage and NFL games in progress around the country readily monitorable. Hyland tees Stark’s opening script with a nod to how Tirico will soon introduce her: “For more on the Colts, let’s go to Melissa.”
“Five Sundays ago, Jeff Saturday was hunting with his 16-year-old Josh,” Stark begins. “Tonight, he’s coaching his fourth NFL game.”
Stark shares her conversation with Saturday’s current receivers coach and former teammate, Reggie Wayne. She cites conversations with two players, including center Ryan Kelly, who touts his new coach as an “authentic energy guy.” Hyland directs which live shot — “97,” he tells colleagues — should accompany Stark’s scripts before Stark’s perfectionist itch kicks in.
“I have a question,” she tells her team. “Do you guys love the line, ‘He walks in and fills the room with his presence’? Just for the sake of, I don’t know, shortening it a bit. If you love it, that’s fine.”
The group agrees: Stark’s instincts on brevity here are correct. Two more tweaks to best deliver her messages and original reporting will follow.
“I’m a reporter at heart,” Stark told Yahoo Sports. “I just want to give great, layered, good information. Just digging deeper and deeper and deeper with these guys. Asking one more question. And having fun with it.”
Through 14 weeks of Sunday Night Football, she’s proud of how she has. In pre-production meetings and postgame field interviews, she’s hammered into her mind never to ask yes-or-no questions, never to project her feelings or assumptions into an interview, and always to slow down her words even as her mind races at a pace NFL Next Gen Stats would struggle to track. During games, Stark aims to track player activity carefully, be it the result of a blue tent or locker room examination for an injury — she keeps details on the nearest trauma center fastened to that blue clipboard — or picking up on exchanges between players after a series.
“You’re the eyes and ears” of the broadcast, she explains.
Last Sunday, after Dolphins wide receiver Tyreek Hill turned his team’s fumble, and the Chargers’ subsequent fumble of their fumble recovery, into a wild 57-yard touchdown return, Stark observed just the chance to bring more access to viewers. Hill was back on the Dolphins’ sideline after the play, processing the absurdity with teammates.
“He said, ‘We’ll take it,’” Stark recalled. “Laughed, shrugged and proceeded to walk his teammates through exactly what happened.”
Stark pressed her “talk back” button to alert the production team.
Embracing the chaos
This week, Stark and her Sunday Night Football colleagues travel to Landover, Maryland, for the NFC East matchup between the Commanders and New York Giants. The storylines, for this matchup of 7-5-1 teams who tied two weeks ago, are rich. Stark spoke with Giants quarterback Daniel Jones and running back Saquon Barkley on Thursday. Conversations with Washington running back Brian Robinson, defensive lineman Jonathan Allen and assistant defensive line coach and former player Ryan Kerrigan were among those on her schedule.
She planned to talk with Giants left tackle Andrew Thomas, a “bright spot” who will be tasked with fending off Washington’s Chase Young if he returns, and to Giants rookie pass rusher Kayvon Thibodeaux.
Neither team will win the NFC East. But both are on track for the NFC’s last two playoff berths.
“It’s not a playoff game in the sense that you lose and you go home,” Stark said, “but just obviously there’s a lot on the line for this game.”
Stark will aim to continue to glean underreported details in a game flexed to her high-profile platform, knowing Tirico and Collinsworth will get first crack at anything discussed in production meetings, Collinsworth even telling his colleagues playfully not to mention their storylines to him because he’ll likely accidentally let it slip.
The nexis for Stark, beyond injuries, in-game interviews with head coaches, and a postgame interview with one or two players from the winning team, is to focus on high-profile players while not focusing on their highest-profile storylines. She feels she’s improved over the last 14 weeks at identifying what will land.
“I think I understand more what stories to pursue that might make air vs. what will never make air,” Stark said. “I know I have a better shot (to chime in on the broadcast) when it’s a different perspective on a star.”
The quest for growth will continue, on the sideline and back at home. Stark knows the goal remains to infuse authenticity and fun into her reporting, constantly finding the next detail to improve on while also finding new ways to be present with her family.
She considers: What 10-second clip will best bring audiences inside players’ sideline conversations? How many Christmas presents can she wrap between conference calls with the New York Giants, strategy sessions with her production team, and picking up Jackson, from school? And wait — Stark’s daughter also texts to ask if mom could also pick her up from track practice. Could the broadcaster do that, too, before the Washington Commanders call?
Stark embraces the chaos, and the opportunity for a role she knows few are offered. She digs deep for the story, and for the best balance of her swirling responsibilities.
“I always like getting better and fine tuning the craft because you can,” she says. “Always trying to improve.”
Follow Yahoo Sports’ Jori Epstein on Twitter @JoriEpstein