Samsung Puts Foles and Matthews on the Therapy Couch

Samsung put Nick Foles and Clay Matthews on a therapy couch in spots that ran during Monday Night Football on September 14, 2026. The Super Bowl MVP and the six-time Pro Bowl linebacker are one pair in Switchers, a Galaxy Z campaign that treats phone loyalty like a relationship problem.

Four days earlier, the same pairing had opened Netflix’s NFL season from a studio desk in Melbourne. Both bookings sell the same thing: two former NFC antagonists who now work as a unit, first as a football show, then as a reason to leave a familiar phone.

Samsung Put a Couples Therapist on the Phone Switch

The ads ran in the Broncos-Chiefs window that closed Week 1, a 8:15 p.m. ET kickoff on ESPN and ABC from Kansas City. Samsung’s own name for the work is Switchers. The sessions are staged as therapy, led by clinical psychologist Dr. Orna Guralnik, known from the series Couples Therapy.

Foles and Matthews are not the whole cast. Guralnik also sits with pop-culture pair Ciara Miller and Dylan Efron, and with reality-TV pair Carl Schmidt and Aniya Harvey, while they handle foldable phones and talk through why people stay put. The Switchers campaign with Dr. Orna Guralnik is built as a run of branded spots and social clips, not a single celebrity endorsement.

In the official reel, Schmidt tells Guralnik he wants to be free to AirDrop his friends, share photos, and text. She answers with Quick Share, now compatible with AirDrop. He agrees, then takes his shirt off. That is the joke the campaign is willing to make on camera: the hang-up is social, and the fix is a demo.

Samsung published competitive-switcher shares for the new Z phones in the same release, and they are not one blended rate. Flip8, Fold8, and Fold8 Ultra each carry their own figure, and both Fold models are described as running ahead of Fold7 on that measure.

Z SERIES SWITCHER SHARES

Those shares are a marketing scoreboard, not a census of iPhone owners. They still tell you what Samsung wants the Monday night spots to do: move people who already like foldables, and make the leap feel smaller than the habit.

Samsung Diagnosed Fear of the Group Chat

Keena Grigsby, chief marketing officer and vice president of Mobile eXperience at Samsung Electronics America, said the hard part is not the spec sheet. “For many people, switching smartphones can feel like a big decision, but we’ve found it is more emotional than technical,” she said. “The relationship we have with our phones is deeply personal, they hold our memories, connect us to the people we love, and are part of how we navigate our everyday lives.”

There’s something very human about sticking with what feels familiar, even when another option might better fit our needs. Curiosity doesn’t mean you’re unhappy or disloyal. It simply means you’re willing to explore what else might be out there. Often, that’s the first step toward meaningful change.

Dr. Orna Guralnik, clinical psychologist, Samsung Switchers campaign

The product under the couch talk is chat. Samsung’s September 8 briefing on RCS chat features on Galaxy lists the functions it wants sitting in a mixed-phone thread: high-resolution photos and video, emoji reactions, and group chats that can add or drop people whether they use Galaxy or not. Foles, talking about the spots, pointed at the same seam. Other phones “can cause issues,” he said, “but with RCS messaging it’s made it a lot easier.”

WHAT SAMSUNG SAYS RCS RESTORES

• Photo quality: High-resolution images and video can move across Android and iOS threads when RCS is on.
• Reactions: Users can tap emoji replies on texts instead of sending a separate message.
• Group edits: People can be added or removed in a mixed-phone group chat.

The transfer path is Smart Switch from iPhone to Galaxy, which Samsung says can carry contacts, photos, videos, messages, apps, and settings. The fine print on the Switchers release says that path needs an iPhone on iOS 26.6 or later. A Spotify playlist, Switch Mix, launched with the ads as a separate mood track through curiosity and change. That is not a camera war. It is a bid to make leaving a thread feel like leaving a bad fit, not losing a social circle.

The loudest organic pull on the campaign video was not the two Super Bowl names. Replies clustered on Schmidt and Harvey, with viewers saying the Love Island pair made a Z Fold look easy. Samsung bought football for Monday night. The couch that played as entertainment was reality TV.

Four Days Earlier, the Same Pair Opened Netflix’s Season

Foles said the Netflix work was already in motion when Samsung called. “Clay and I [were already] working with Netflix to do the primetime NFL games when this switching therapy with Dr. Orna came to be,” he said. “They reached out to our representatives. We’re working together now and going to be spending more time together.” Matthews said that pre-existing desk job helped the ad-set chemistry, because the two of them had already had to talk on camera as a unit.

Netflix listed the Melbourne Game announcers on Netflix with Elle Duncan hosting studio coverage beside Hall of Famer Michael Irvin, Foles, and Matthews. Noah Eagle called play-by-play with 2026 Hall of Fame inductee Luke Kuechly in his first booth job. Tom Pelissero and MJ Acosta-Ruiz reported from the sideline, with Terry McAulay on rules. Kickoff was 8:35 p.m. ET on September 10 from the Melbourne Cricket Ground, the league’s first regular-season game in Australia, carried in all Netflix plans.

The 49ers beat the Rams 27-7. On September 14, the same day the Samsung spots launched, the NFL posted Nielsen figures for that stream: it averaged 18.5 million U.S. viewers.

MELBOURNE ON NETFLIX

• U.S. average: 18.5 million viewers, per Nielsen Big Data + Panel.
• U.S. peak: 21.3 million between 9:30 and 9:45 p.m. ET.
• Younger slice: 4.0 million viewers among people 18-34, the highest non-Christmas streaming delivery for a regular-season NFL game.
• Stadium: 100,021 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, seventh-most attended regular-season game in NFL history.

A separate global count in the same release put the audience at 21.7 million across more than 200 countries and territories, and called it the most-watched NFL game ever in Australia. Netflix now holds the top four highest-rated regular-season NFL games among adults 18-34, including Christmas, per that same posting.

The clip that left the broadcast was not a coverage point. During the show, Foles drank from a shoe. Netflix posted the bit itself.

NICK FOLES DID A SHOEY pic.twitter.com/IEaqItJ7Ry

— Netflix (@netflix) September 11, 2026

Matthews described the gap between film study as a player and talking on a stage. “When you’re up there on stage, it’s a completely different beast,” he said. “Sometimes when you play, you can get lost in the weeds.” The job, as he framed it, is split: “We want to entertain, but we also want to educate.” Foles had picked San Francisco to win. Netflix Sports later noted he was the only one on that desk who did.

The Desk Was Built for Chemistry

Irvin is the returning voice, with Netflix work already on the books. Foles and Matthews were new to the company’s NFL studio, and new to a league TV booth in any serious way. Matthews said the aim is to give the viewer “a taste” of the game he and Foles still love. That is also what Samsung bought a few days later: two men who can needle each other without a script holding their hands.

What Foles and Matthews Improvised on Set

They had pages. They did not stay on them. “Working together, me playing on defense, him on offense, a lot of it was improvised on the spot, so it feels authentic,” Matthews said. “It feels original. It feels like something that people can relate to.” Foles reached for the only comparison he trusts.

It’s like you go into a game with a play, right? And then it’s up to the players to bring the play to life. When they’re filming scenes in movies, there’s a baseline, but then the actors just take it and make it their own.

Nick Foles, on the Switchers shoot

The NFL pair’s beat in the spots, as described around the launch, is foldable hardware and richer texting. Foles got a kick out of Matthews becoming a “green bubble person” on camera. In the campaign’s own language, familiarity gets mistaken for compatibility. That line is doing double work. It is the iPhone-to-Galaxy pitch, and it is also the joke of booking two men who spent years as each other’s problem and now share a desk.

Green Jerseys, Green Bubbles, and a 15-Year Habit

Foles did not have to be talked into the booking. “Listen, this is a long time coming for me,” he said. “I’ve used Samsung for probably 15 years.” The campaign needs converts. Its highest-profile football name is a lifer. Matthews is the one the spots walk toward the green thread. Foles noted that both of them did their best winning in green jerseys, which is why the bubble gag landed for him.

That split is the tell. Samsung is not asking Foles to switch. It is asking viewers to watch a linebacker do it, under the care of a couples therapist, while a quarterback who never left the brand nods along. The therapy format lets the company talk about fear, loyalty, and the group chat without putting a competing logo on screen. Grigsby’s line about conversations “you’d have with a partner, teammate or friend” is the brief in one clause. Foles and Matthews were hired because they already had the teammate version of that talk.

The pairing is dual-use inventory. Netflix needed a studio that could sit next to Irvin and not freeze. Samsung needed a male friendship that could survive a therapy joke. The same two résumés filled both orders in a four-day span, which is why the ads feel less like a random endorsement and more like a second pass at a product that had just been on a global stream.

Family Comes First on the Broadcast Question

Asked whether the Netflix desk is a full-time turn or a one-off, Foles would not convert. He is a father of three, coaches his kids’ football teams, and co-hosts The SZN With Nick Foles & Evan Moore. “I’ve always lived in the moment,” he said. “This was a great opportunity to work with Netflix to cover [the] NFL. We’ll see after this season what the future holds. But I just stay in the moment, do what I can, and embrace today, because we’re really fortunate to have today.”

Netflix still has four NFL games on its 2026 list after Melbourne: Packers at Rams on November 25, a Thanksgiving Eve slot; Packers at Bears and Broncos at Bills on December 25; and a Week 18 game to be named. Tudum said the Melbourne studio and in-game team will return across that slate, with more names to come. That is a door, not a contract Foles would describe.

THE WEEK THE PAIR GOT PACKAGED

1. August 3, 2026: Netflix adds Foles and Matthews to studio coverage for Rams-49ers in Melbourne.
2. September 10, 2026: The 49ers win 27-7 at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Netflix, with Foles and Matthews on the desk.
3. September 11, 2026: Netflix posts the clip of Foles drinking from a shoe.
4. September 14, 2026: Switchers launches, the spots run in the Broncos-Chiefs Monday Night Football window, and Nielsen’s U.S. average for Melbourne is posted.

Samsung will keep running the couch spots. Netflix will keep using the desk on the dates it already owns. Foles, the 15-year Samsung user who just did his first NFL studio show, is the one person in the ads who still declines to call a switch a plan.