Troy Aikman, working Super Bowl 54, has changed in a good way. Allow Joe Buck to explain.

Troy Aikman had gone along quietly for 18 years offering thoughtful, cogent commentary as Fox’s lead NFL game analyst, seldom saying anything explosive enough to elicit much of a reaction. And that was fine.

But something happened to Aikman on the way to the Super Bowl this year, and it was as refreshing as it was unexpected. It’s as if he said to himself: “You know what? I don’t really need a filter. I’m Troy Aikman and I can say whatever I damn please.”

Off the air, there was the stunning Twitter response to Fox Sports 1’s Doug Gottlieb, who — in the wake of Andrew Luck’s retirement in August -- tweeted: “Retiring cause rehabbing is ‘too hard’ is the most millennial thing ever.”

To which Aikman responded: “That’s total [expletive] Doug. What qualifies you to decide how someone should live their life? So you’re now the authority on what motivates Andrew Luck? And if his decisions don’t fit into what you think is best for him then you rip him? Guess that keeps you employed on FS1. Nice.”

On air, there has been more cutting candor, more open displays of exasperation with ineptitude. We saw it during Denver’s game against Kansas City on a Thursday night game in October when Aikman eviscerated Joe Flacco and the Broncos offense.

“This is about as bad an offense as I’ve seen,” Aikman said. “I’m shocked there’s as many people here still at the game. Very lackadaisical. The whole operation.”

And when Flacco and a receiver finally made a play, Aikman said: “Yeah, that’s a good catch. That’s not a good throw.”

Aikman blamed the Cowboys for “poor coaching” on one questionable play design against the Cowboys.

We love the new I’ll-say-what-I-am-damn-please-without-fear-of-consequences Aikman.

He doesn’t come out every quarter or even every game.

But he pokes his head up enough to make him more interesting than anytime I can remember, and we hope he comes out — if something calls for it — when he calls Sunday’s Super Bowl with Joe Buck.

Buck, Aikman’s broadcast partner on Fox’s lead team since 2002, said he agrees that there has been less of a filter in Aikman’s commentary this season.

“I think so, but I think everybody develops over time,” Buck said this past week. “I do sense he’s more willing to shoot from the hip or go with his gut. When you go back in time and he was the lone voice of reason on a crazy Cowboys team, he was very measured and I think he had to be that way. Like Derek Jeter with the Yankees. He could talk for five minutes and you would leave going, ‘I don’t remember one thing he said.’ But that’s the way he survived in New York.”

Buck said he’s “proud of” Aikman for that new level of candor.

“Because there is something with Troy, when he says something that’s got some teeth in it, it catches everybody’s attention,” Buck said. “And that’s a positive, but it can also be a negative in this world because you’re answering for it for the next two weeks.

“It’s how much do you want to stir it up because you’re going to be asked about it and it’s going to be all over social media and all over crawls, Troy Aikman said blank. I think he’s been more willing to jump down into that. But I don’t think he’s ever unfair. He’s always fair. He’s always researched. When you’re that, and you’ve won three Super Bowls, you can say what you want.”

With the Gottlieb tweet in August, a Fox executive called Aikman about the tweet and he told Sports Illustrated’s media podcast that Fox “respected that I was being honest. They did not like that I said something about the company, and I understand that. I appreciate the way that they discussed it with me. The tweet’s still up.”

Buck, who will be calling his sixth Super Bowl with Aikman, said: “We’re truly great friends and I don’t know that that’s typical in this business. There seems to be a lot of paranoid people in broadcasting but we’re not. I root for him as much as I root for myself on these games. Lot of familiarity on and off the air.”

TV NOTES

▪ Buck said this Super Bowl 54 “kind of feels like the one we had in New York. When we were doing Super Bowl 48 in New York, different parts of the city you didn’t know if the Super Bowl was there or not. Miami is so big and metropolitan and cosmopolitan, you can find areas of the city that do not know, do not care that the Super Bowl is happening here.

“If they were doing it in Indianapolis or my hometown [of St. Louis], everybody would be aware. I’ll enjoy the sun, enjoy the weather. Sunday, just roll into the booth and go home” Monday.

▪ Buck said he expects the death of Kobe Bryant in a helicopter crash last Sunday will be mentioned during the broadcast.

“I don’t think you can do a game a week later and not talk about his passing,” Buck said. “There’s a sick feeling that he’s no longer with us.”

▪ Besides the usual pregame cast of Curt Menefee, Terry Bradshaw, Howie Long, Michael Strahan, Jimmy Johnson and Jay Glazer, Fox will also use Rob Gronkowski (who joined the network earlier this season) and former UM tight end Greg Olsen on the pre-game show.

Olsen, who parted ways with the Carolina Panthers on Thursday, has worked a couple of NFL games for Fox on bye weeks the past two years and has a bright future in the business. But he wants to keep playing.

Fox’s programming earlier in the day Sunday includes a Super Bowl edition of Skip Bayless’ and Shannon Sharpe’s weekday show Undisputed from 11 a.m. to noon, NFL Films’ Road to the Super Bowl from noon to 1 p.m., and Fox’s Super Bowl kickoff show from 1 to 2 p.m., with Dave Wannstedt, Tony Gonzalez and Michael Vick, among others.

Fox Sports CEO Eric Shanks said if a story or segment “doesn’t celebrate football or celebrate America, it’s not going to be in the [pregame] show… We do it bigger and better than anybody else.”

MYERS BACK HOME

Fox’s Chris Myers, who grew up in North Miami and Hollywood and attended Hollywood Chaminade Madonna, this week is handling the biggest assignment he’s ever had in his hometown: sideline reporting on the Super Bowl, in tandem with Erin Andrews.

Myers, who has done NFL play-by-play for Fox for nine years, will be reporting from a Super Bowl for a sixth time for Fox.

Myers remembers calling a local sports talk show on WKAT at age 14, then calling back using a different voice an hour later. By 16, WKAT had hired him and Sonny Hirsch dispatched him to interview Muhammad Ali and Don Shula.

Working a Super Bowl in his hometown is “very meaningful,” Myers said. “You never forget your roots.”

▪ During Myers’ career at ESPN, he joked that he was “one heartbeat away” from taking over for Chris Berman.

And Berman, who came back from a limited part-time ESPN schedule, to host NFL PrimeTime with Tom Jackson on the ESPN plus digital platform this season, will have a presence on Sunday, hosting the iconic program on ESPN-TV after the game, at 10:30 p.m.

▪ Joe Montana, Brett Favre and Drew Brees will join Fox lead college football analyst Joel Klatt for a unique Super Bowl broadcast that will air on Fox’s social and media platforms. It will be an audio-only broadcast.