Seeing that ESPN is the network that heavily promoted (if not invented) the idea that sports anchors/commentators are entertainers as compelling as the games they cover, one wonders if the “talent” cutback is destroying most of ESPN’s reason to exist.
You forgot the sarcasm emoji.
Beth Mowins frequently gets players names wrong e.g. Shalique Calhoun was called Shalique Coleman.
You got Shilique Calhoun’s name wrong too.
The national commentators get names wrong all the time, even the best ones. They come in on a Thursday, have 24 hours to meet the players and coaches, and do the game. Some guy with a strange name who’s a third round draft pick isn’t going to get a lot of attention. They can’t even get the name of my local team’s quarterback right half the time.
People get used to their local radio guys who cover the team 24/7 and know the player’s mom’s names and that they played NAIA volleyball for Great Falls University.
One wonders if maybe it’ll cause ESPN’s quality to, if inadvertently, improve.
I’m imagining Harry Caray trying to say “Shilique Calhoun.”
Wait, there are still people who don’t watch live sports on mute? 
I have to challenge the credibility of someone who doesn’t think that Bomani Jones, Pablo Torre, Mina Kimes or Dan LeBatard count as ‘smart’ commentators. I wonder if you might be conflating ‘smart’ with ‘obsessed with the minutiae of the sport’?
Wait, am I reading this correctly? Beth Mowins and Rex Ryan are going to be calling NFL games together, and your strongest objection is with the one who has broadcasting experience? Please tell me I’m reading this wrong?
Now, I actually do mostly agree with this. I wish that ESPN would restore ESPN News and ESPN Classic to the format that they were originally conceived for, so that people who still want ‘hardcore’ sports to be a thing would continue to have their safe space for that, and the main ESPN channel could continue to be what it has become, for the benefit of people like me, who actually want that, instead.
He’d try to say it backwards, too. 
Another one bites the dust…
ESPN fires their best football reporter not named Adam. John Clayton is no more. AT least he’ll be ok when it comes to lodging, living in his mother’s basement and all.
On a serious note…sigh…really ESPN? Really?
It figures. Why keep knowledgeable commentators around, when you could spend the money on the likes of Max Kellerman and Stephen A. Smith.
Lest you think I’m just insulting Smith, the guy IS smart and he USED to be a good reporter. But he figured out long ago that the big bucks are in doing an angry, combative schtick. That’s what ESPN wants, and that’s what they’re hiring people for.