Tag: nfl playoffs

For Melissa Stark, “there’s nothing better” than when the “Sunday Night Football” preparation “all comes together.”

With the Packers set to close out the year with a win over the Vikings on New Year’s Eve, Stark knew the postgame interview with Green Bay quarterback Jordan Love could be a golden opportunity for the 25-year-old to test out his New Year’s resolution of shuffling cards — something the veteran NFL reporter learned earlier in the week.

“I asked all the players this week their New Year’s resolutions and Jordan Love’s was to learn how to shuffle cards,” Stark recently recalled to The Post. “At the last minute our producer goes, ‘Oh my gosh, you should have cards there.’”

Though securing the cards was something of a whirlwind — “We left them in our truck and two minutes to go, I’m like, ‘Who has the cards?’” — Stark was able to hand Love a deck as Green Bay celebrated its blowout 33-10 victory in Week 17.

“It becomes this really funny thing postgame, and I’m like, ‘Here, you can get started,’ and I hand him the deck of cards,” Stark said. “It’s so fun when your research from the week pays off that way. We do it to tell stories and the stories are definitely the best part of our jobs.”

Stark, 50, has been reporting stories from both the studio and sidelines for more than two decades.

A University of Virginia alum, Stark is enjoying a memorable sophomore season on “Sunday Night Football” — more than 20 years after serving as a sideline reporter for ABC’s “Monday Night Football” from 2000-’02.

Before her return in 2022, when she took over sideline duties from Michele Tafoya, Stark — a former national correspondent on NBC’s “Today” show, among other posts held at the network from 2003-’07 — stepped away from the business to focus on raising her four children with husband Mike.

“What I think I’m most proud of is the longevity that I’ve had and the fact that I was able to leave the business and not know if I was going to come back and be OK with that, I was OK with that because starting a family to me was so important,” said Stark, who worked her 100th regular-season game from the sideline in December.

“So coming back, what it means is that I’m able to come back to a career that I absolutely love and frankly, with such a different perspective. Coming back later in my life, more mature and as a mom.”

With the playoffs nearing, Stark is looking back on an NFL season that’s been quite the “family” affair.

When the Jets hosted the Chiefs at MetLife Stadium in Week 4, which marked Taylor Swift’s second gameday appearance in support of boyfriend Travis Kelce, Stark’s daughters — much like Swifties everywhere — were hoping to catch a glimpse of the pop superstar.

“My daughter was in the truck for that first (game) and she was like, ‘Mom, I watched Taylor the whole time,’ ” said Stark, who noted production “had a camera on [Swift] the whole time for her reactions.”

What’s more, Starks’ kids, Clara, Clemmie, Jackson and Mike, got to see her in action.

“The beauty of it is, they love what I do and they get to see it and they get to come along, they all love football and coming on the field with me,” Stark said.

The Swift scene was just one of the exciting stories Stark covered this season.

As the Raiders prepared to face the Jets in Week 10 in Las Vegas, Stark spoke with Raiders linebacker Robert Spillane in the days ahead, in which a “throwaway question” transpired into something more significant.

“He talked to me on the way home [from practice] and his wife [Shelby] was in the car,” Stark recalled. “I go, ‘What’s motivating you this season?’ Sort of a throwaway question, and he turns to his wife in the car, ‘Should we tell her?’ And he was like, ‘Well, my wife’s actually pregnant and we haven’t told anybody yet.’”

The 28-year-old Spillane then relayed to Stark that if he made a “crazy play,” he would put the football under his jersey as if he were pregnant.

The plan sort of came to be when Spillane had the game-sealing interception in the Raiders’ 16-12 win.

“He gets the game-winning interception, he goes nuts, he forgets to do this, so right when I get him, I was like, ‘Hey, we’re going to break some news, you were supposed to put the ball under your shirt,’ and then he does it in the postgame interview,” Stark said.

“I just get excited when it all comes together, all your hard work.”

As wild-card weekend gets underway, Stark is soaking in the moment in what she described as “the perfect role.”

“There’s a ton of adrenaline and it’s very energizing, and I just feel very fortunate that I found the perfect role for me. It’s exactly what I want to do,” she said.

Stark will report from Detroit as part of “Sunday Night Football’s” wild-card weekend coverage, with Mike Tirico and Cris Collinsworth calling the anticipated Rams-Lions matchup in which Matthew Stafford makes his return to Ford Field.

Kickoff gets underway on Jan. 13 at 8 p.m.