Pink and blue cotton-candy clouds dot the early evening August sky as Bram Weinstein stands at the window of his fourth-floor perch in Northwest Stadium. He puts a pair of binoculars to his eyes and surveys the perfectly manicured Bermuda grass below.

It’s “an absolutely beautiful night at Commanders Field,” says Weinstein, SOC/BA ’95, narrating the action for the Washington Commanders Radio Network a few minutes before kickoff during the team’s only preseason game at home. “Temps in the 70s, and it’s going to hover around the mid-70s throughout the evening as we get set to close out the preseason. The boos are for the New England Patriots, who just took the field.” 

Weinstein, the radio voice for DC’s National Football League franchise since 2020, is only the third person in the last 50 years to hold the position. For the Washington faithful who tune in to Big 100.3 from parts beyond Landover, Maryland, Weinstein—along with color commentators and retired Washington players Logan Paulsen and London Fletcher—is their eyes and ears. 

“Washington’s wearing black on black,” he says. “New England’s in white jerseys and blue pants.” 

Weinstein keeps a yellow legal pad nearby and rectangular game boards peppered with rosters, statistics, storylines, and notes scribbled in the margins. Those tools of the trade are there if he needs them—but the job requires Weinstein to function more like a jazz musician. Once the lights come on, he feels the rhythm of the game and lets the words flow. 

“He’s gotten to the point where he’s ingratiated himself with the fan base,” says Ryan Yocum, the Commanders’ director of studio and broadcast production. “They’re starting to associate his voice with the Commanders.” 

After the game, Weinstein will have trouble sleeping as he comes down from the adrenaline rush of calling Washington’s 20–10 win. It’s just as well. He needn’t close his eyes to imagine his childhood dream anymore—he’s living it. 

“I have watched every play [Washington] has run since I was a kid,” Weinstein says. “I might as well be a historian of the team. They feel like my family—or in some ways, my religion. I’m that invested.” 

Growing up in 1980s Silver Spring, Maryland, Sundays were a revered day of worship in the Weinsteins’ ranch-style home. When the game came on, a congregation of friends, family, and neighborhood youngsters gathered on a wraparound couch facing a credenza that held the TV, which served as an altar of sorts to head coach Joe Gibbs. 

Weinstein’s path to the broadcasting booth began there, in the family room, among the green shag carpeting and wood paneling, as the slight youngster pretended to call the games for the burgundy and gold. “He knew he wanted to do broadcast journalism,” says Elsa Weinstein, who remains a devoted Commanders fan but now turns the volume on the TV down and the radio up so she can hear her son narrate the action. “He knew it right away.” 

Weinstein’s budding interest in broadcasting and his football fandom developed parallel to one another. By the time he turned 18, he had seen Washington hoist the Lombardi Trophy three times—including during the team’s first Super Bowl victory parade in 1982 when he was nine and the local schools closed for the occasion. Despite the cold and the rain, the family gleefully soaked up the celebration along Pennsylvania Avenue. 

Back then, football was the heartbeat that brought the city to life. It mattered, sometimes more than anything else in the nation’s capital. “It’s one of those things you realize when you’re young—you’re part of something special,” Weinstein says. “Not only did I just like [football] and want to know everything about it, but it mattered.That’s why I wanted to be a part of it.”

As a kid, Weinstein idolized the sportscasters and writers who covered his hometown team. He grew up reading Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon in the sports section of the Washington Post and watching theGeorge Michael Sports Machine, which ran for 22 years on the local NBC affiliate and was the syndicated precursor to ESPN’s SportsCenter. “I saw how to do a lot of this at the highest level as a child living here,” Weinstein says. 

When he was 15, Weinstein met one of his idols. NBC4 put out a call for viewers to submit their wishes, and Weinstein wrote in asking to be Michael for a day. The station invited him down to the studio to run through basketball highlights in front of Michael. The local broadcasting legend quickly realized the affable teen had something. “He’s too good,” Weinstein and his mother recall Michael saying playfully. “Get him off the air.” 

At Springbrook High School, Weinstein was the sports editor for the student newspaper and the public address announcer for the Blue Devils’ basketball and football games. A few years later, he began studying broadcast journalism at AU’s School of Communication. He only really considered one other school, Syracuse University, but a partial scholarship from AU sealed the deal. 

As an Eagle, Weinstein made lifelong friends and learned plenty in the classroom. But what made his AU experience particularly valuable was the university’s location in a top 10 sports market. Landing internships at SportsTalk 980 and WUSA9, Washington’s CBS affiliate, gave him not only a glimpse of what post-college life could be like, but the skills to get there.

Coming to AU “ended up being a really good choice,” Weinstein says. “I had incredible internships through American University. I really enjoyed SOC, and I’ve been honored to teach there in recent years as an adjunct. I love my school.” 

Weinstein remains connected to his alma mater and has season tickets for the AU men’s basketball team. As a young alumnus in the early aughts, he used to call hoops contests from Bender Arena on radio and television. The gig—his only real play-by-play experience before joining the Commanders organization—was short-lived. That wasn’t, however, because Weinstein was the wrong person for the job.

“A small company in Bristol, Connecticut, called,” remembers David Bierwirth, AU’s associate director of athletics for external relations. “Having him get that opportunity at a national broadcaster like ESPN was a no-brainer, and we were really proud of him.”

Weinstein anchored SportsCenter from 2008 to 2015, guiding millions of viewers through highlights on the channel’s flagship program. There, he learned the real fundamentals of play-by-play and the challenges of reporting headlines and highlights in real time. During commercial breaks, a producer would often hand him a sheet of paper with details about a buzzer-beater that just swished through the net. Thirty seconds later, Weinstein had to describe the action like he’d watched it live. 

When Weinstein got the phone call that he’d landed the Commanders job a month before the 2020–21 season, he fell back on his ESPN experience. He also asked for advice from his deep network of fellow broadcasters. The best guidance he received was simple but important: Don’t forget to remind your audience of the score. 

Play-by-play isn’t as easy as some might think, says Yocum, the Commanders’ director of studio and broadcast production. It requires describing the formations, action, context, and excitement of the moment. It demands knowing when to lend your voice, when to let it breathe, and when to dish it off to your teammates in the booth. And all those decisions have to happen as quickly as the plays on the field. 

“He’s a juggler; he’s got six or seven balls constantly [going] throughout the game,” Yocum says of Weinstein. “When you listen to the broadcast, I don’t think most people would realize the amount of stuff he’s got going on. That’s how you know he’s a pro.” 

Calling football games requires staying on your toes too, like a linebacker anticipating the snap. Any given play could lead to a touchdown, a turnover, or a two-yard run.

“It’s the best reality TV on earth,” Weinstein says. “You never know what’s going to occur, and you just hope through training and [experience], your instincts take over for big moments because that’s what’s going to be remembered.” 

Monday marks the beginning of Weinstein’s intensive game-day preparation. The day after he calls a game, Weinstein watches all four quarters, one second at a time, pausing and rewinding the All-22 view that captures every player on the field and scribbling notes on what to ask the coaches and players later in the week. 

On Tuesday, he digs into Washington’s next opponent, watching film of their last several games. Wednesdays and Thursdays are spent drilling statistics and creating game boards, which include any data point he might need during a broadcast. Fridays and Saturdays are review days to ensure Weinstein has everything he needs to fill a three-hour broadcast—and then some. “Of the things I write down to potentially use, 80 percent of it doesn’t get on air,” he says. “But it’s there. The only way I feel good about doing this is [by] feeling prepared, and the only way to be prepared is to overprepare.”

When the Commanders play at home, he always stops by Parkway Deli in Silver Spring for a pregame omelet on the way to the stadium on Sunday morning. The rest of the day, he rests his vocal cords with lots of hot tea and tries to talk as little as possible. 

Once he’s finally on air, Weinstein likes to imagine he’s speaking directly to the die-hard fans who—like him—grew up loving this team, living and dying with every play. He pictures them huddled on the couch together in their jerseys and cheering on the burgundy and gold—something he’d be doing too, even if he wasn’t getting paid for it. 

“It’s their game, their story,” he says of his hometown team. “I’m just lucky to tell it.”