None of the three men working this weekend's first playoff telecast announced a single NFL game during the regular season. But the voices on NBC's Jets-Bengals game Saturday will sound familiar: Joe Theismann and his former Redskins coach, Joe Gibbs, along with veteran play-by-play voice Tom Hammond.

Because NBC has only one NFL announcing team (Al Michaels-Cris Collinsworth, who will call Eagles-Cowboys), it needed to find a second team for the opener of its doubleheader.

In past years, before John Madden retired, NBC used Hammond and Collinsworth on the first game.

This year, NBC summoned Gibbs, who worked in its studio from 1994 to 1997, and Theismann, who was dumped by ESPN's Monday Night Football after 2006.

They should engage in lively exchanges, provided Theismann doesn't hog the mike.

"He'll probably argue with me the whole night," Gibbs said in jest. "I'm going to make him promise to let me get in a word edgewise."

NBC doesn't get to choose its two wild-card games, but the NFL usually seems to give NBC the most attractive game to air in its prime-time Saturday slot. It was natural to give NBC Eagles-Cowboys because Fox had that same matchup last weekend. Charles Barkley, who will be at NBC on Saturday to host "Saturday Night Live," will appear on some NFL studio programming during its doubleheader.