Charles Davis is expected to be let go from NFL Network, even as he remains the No. 1 college football analyst on CBS' Big Ten afternoon games. The move, first reported by Andrew Marchand on July 21, 2026, would end a run that has tied Davis to NFL Network's draft and Scouting Combine coverage since 2007.
That is why the news landed with immediate force for readers tracking the network's summer layoffs. Davis is not a marginal name on the NFL side; he has been part of the draft and Scouting Combine telecasts for nearly two decades, and his work has sat alongside his CBS role rather than replacing it. Marchand also reported that Davis will take over for Gary Danielson as CBS's lead college football analyst alongside Brad Nessler this fall, keeping him visible even as one of his other homes appears set to close.
His path helps explain the significance. Davis got his start as a college football analyst for Fox Sports South in 1997, moved to TBS in 2002 and then to Fox Sports full-time in 2007, where he worked three consecutive BCS National Championship games. He shifted into the NFL side full-time in 2015 and later paired with Kevin Burkhardt and Pam Oliver on Fox's No. 2 broadcast team before leaving for CBS in 2020. That dual presence made him a rare figure: a college voice on Saturdays and a draft voice in the spring.
The friction in this move is hard to miss. Davis is being pushed toward the exit from NFL Network at the same time he remains central to CBS, which is set to promote him into an even bigger role this fall. Joel Klatt said in April that he believed he had already worked his final draft for NFL Network, a comment that now reads less like a passing thought than a sign of how the network's footprint around the draft is changing., meanwhile, intends to keep producing a separate NFL Network draft telecast alongside its ABC and Pat McAfee-led coverage, so Davis's absence would land inside a format that is still being kept alive.
What is not yet clear is whether the expected move has become a formal termination or when it would take effect. For now, the facts point to a veteran analyst whose CBS profile is rising while his long run on NFL Network appears to be ending, with the draft booth likely to feel that loss first.
