Merrill Reese has called every Eagles Super Bowl. His seat this time isn’t ideal.

The Eagles’ first Super Bowl took place in the Superdome against the Oakland Raiders in 1981, and in the booth to call the game was a youthful, 39-year-old broadcaster named Merrill Reese.

The Eagles have appeared in four Super Bowls, and Reese — the NFL’s longest-tenured announcer and prestigious Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award winner — has been the booth for all the them. He’s back in New Orleans to call the final game of his 48th NFL season as a broadcaster, and as luck would have it, it’s in the same exact spot he called his first Super Bowl 44 years ago.

Well, the stadium is the same. The view isn’t.

“We are way up at the very top of the dome, looking down at little dots,” Reese said. “I use my binoculars a lot more than I used to. But my vision is very good, thank goodness, and I’m able to see the numbers. But it’s a long way.”

The view is important. While Fox’s Kevin Burkhardt and Tom Brady have numerous screens to look at while calling the game, Reese doesn’t have a single monitor. In fact, the only television in the booth is a small monitor on a delay to allow Reese’s longtime broadcast partner, former Eagles receiver Mike Quick, to explain a play after it happens.

“I’ve been doing it so long this way, I’m comfortable,” Reese said. “But if I had another big screen in the booth, you wouldn’t hear any complaints.”

Reese’s first year in the booth was 1977, but he didn’t start the season as the play-by-play announcer — he was the color analyst alongside former WIP program director Charlie Swift. Swift died by suicide late in the season, thrusting Reese into the role. Despite all the time and events that have passed, Reese recalls advice Swift gave him during his first preseason game.

“He called me kid. And the very first thing he ever said to me when I sat down was, ‘Kid, we say hundreds of things on a Sunday afternoon, and some of them are going to be wrong,’” Reese said. “We are human beings. We don’t have editors. Everything that comes out of our mouth immediately, and we’re all going to say things that make us seem dumb at the moment.”

To minimize mistakes, Reese leans on longtime spotter Billy Werndl to help him with play calls. They have a system of about 30 hand signals that allows Werndl to silently offer information in realtime as Reese focuses on the football.

“For example, he’ll move his hand back and forth in a throwing motion and point to somebody, and that means so-and-so rushed the passer,” Reese explained. “If he cups his hands and turns it over, like trapping a fly on a table, it will tell me the name of the person who recovered a fumble or made the hit that created the fumble.”

Fans on social media are notoriously critical of announcers, though Reese has been able to avoid much of that venom. But that doesn’t mean he’s perfect. One challenge he faces are the fonts on the Eagles’ jerseys, which he said makes it easy to confuse the No. 6 and No. 8, especially when calling games at stadiums without a great vantage point. Same goes for the No. 8 and No. 0.

“I used to have trouble with DeSean Jackson, who was No. 10, and Jeremy Maclin, who was No. 18, because they were both wide receivers with a somewhat slight build,” Reese said.

During the NFC championship game against the Washington Commanders, Reese made a point to visit the Fox broadcast booth ahead of the game, where Burkhardt — who grew up an Eagles fan in North Jersey — introduced the longtime Birds announcer to Brady.

Brady has a special place in the minds of Eagles fans, though their anger over the loss to the New England Patriots in the 2005 Super Bowl was tempered somewhat by the Birds’ Super Bowl win 13 years later. Still, after the game there were plenty of Center City buildings defaced with anti-Brady graffiti, and he didn’t win over fans by declining to shake Nick Foles’ hand after the game.

Reese is a lifelong Eagles fan, but he’s also a broadcasting professional, and thinks most of the criticism thrown at Brady during his first year in the booth is unwarranted. It reminds him of the misplaced criticism Quick faced when he replaced Stan Walters, who had called Eagles games for 14 seasons from 1984 to 1997.

“In the first couple of weeks, people were comparing Mike to Stan. How could he be as comfortable after two weeks, where Stan did it for 14 years?” Reese said. ”Now Mike’s one of the best color analysts anyplace.”

Not focusing on fans who nitpick every call lets Reese have a little fun in the booth when the action on the field warrants it. During the NFC championship game, Reese turned Saquon Barkley’s 100-yard rushing performance into an opportunity to mock the running back’s former team.

“I think passionate Eagles fans ought to wake up each morning, open their windows, look in the direction of North Jersey, and scream out the window. Thank you, Giants!” Reese said during the broadcast.

If the Eagles win Sunday, it would be a tempting idea for Reese to ride off into the sunset, an appropriate end to a Hall of Fame career for a local boy who landed a dream job calling his favorite team.

But the 82-year-old has no plans to hang up the headset after the Super Bowl. Or next year. Or the year after that. And that’s just fine with 94.1 WIP program director Rod Lakin.

“I’m in the Merrill Reese business, as long as I can be in the Merrill Reese business,” Lakin said.

“I hope I’m back for many years,” Reese said. “I just love it. I feel as comfortable in the booth as possible, my voice hasn’t changed, my vision is excellent... I’m not running off into the sunset.”