Few among the 34.5 million could have been disappointed. But what could those viewers have thought of the usually well-spoken Gumbel, who said early in the game, “The Patriots with their high-powered offense come back on the field for the first time this evening”?

They heard someone who shouldn’t be in this seat, not beside Cris Collinsworth, who has proved through his work on the NFL Network, NBC and HBO that he is the best N.F.L. analyst around.

But Gumbel, one of the most talented studio personalities of the last 25 years, is struggling to learn what he should be doing after the network’s two seasons.

He doesn’t see the field well, which leads him to be imprecise (or wrong) about yardage gained on a play or the yard line. More often than not, he will not even try to provide the yardage.

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His imprecision leads him to fall back on ambiguities like “the ball is inside the 10” or “way short of the first-down marker,” phrases that more experienced announcers only occasionally use. Gumbel uses them as crutches. He repeatedly locates a play as going to “this side” or the “far side,” when “right” or “left” will suffice. He too frequently uses “stone” as a verb to denote a runner gaining little or no yardage. How about “stacked up” or “stopped”?