Charles Davis is the latest high-profile person involved in ESPN’s ongoing layoffs.
Davis, who will succeed Gary Danielson this fall as CBS’ lead college football analyst alongside Brad Nessler, is expected to be fired from the NFL Network, according to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand.
NEWS: Longtime NFL Network analyst Charles Davis is expected to be fired, The Athletic has learned.
Davis remains the No. 1 college football analyst for CBS daytime Big Ten games.
— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) July 21, 2026
Davis’ departure adds another title to a week that has already reshaped ESPN and NFL Network’s on-air lineups, starting with Monday night’s firing of Ryan Clark, which unfolded live on air. Tuesday morning brought news that Karl Ravech had been fired after 33 years at the network, just one night after the Dodgers-Phillies game was called. Awful Announcing also learned that David Lloyd, Stefania Bell and Tom Pelissero were among the cuts. ESPN President Jimmy Pitaro addressed the layoffs in a company-wide memo Tuesday morning, calling the cuts a byproduct of the integration of the NFL assets ESPN acquired earlier this year while acknowledging that some positions outside of that acquisition were also affected.
Davis’ television career spanned more than two decades and appeared on nearly every major network. He began his career as a college football analyst at Fox Sports South in 1997, a job he called “a fluke,” before moving to TBS in 2002 and then to Fox Sports full-time in 2007, where he became the network’s lead football analyst and worked three straight BCS National Championship games. He moved to the NFL full-time in 2015, pairing with Kevin Burkhardt and Pam Oliver on Fox’s No. 2 broadcast team, before leaving for CBS in 2020 to join Ian Eagle’s booth. Throughout this time, Charles Davis has resided at NFL Network, where he has contributed draft and scouting combine coverage since 2007.
This is where Davis’ departure will be felt the most in the draft. Fox’s Joel Klatt, who has appeared alongside Davis, Rich Eisen and Daniel Jeremiah on NFL Network’s 2021 draft coverage as an unofficial credit from Fox, said back in April that he believed he had already worked out his final draft for the network, telling Kay Adams on Up and Adams that his contract with Fox would prevent him from moving into ESPN’s ownership structure.
With Klatt effectively gone and Davis now expected to be fired, only Eisen and Jeremiah remain from the NFL Network’s core broadcast team, even though ESPN has said it intends to continue producing a standalone NFL Network project telecast alongside its ABC and Pat McAfee coverage.
For now, Charles Davis joins a growing list of recognizable names—Clark, Ravek, Lloyd, Bell and Pelissero among them—whose departures have defined layoffs that Pitaro’s memo suggests are still ongoing.