‘Criminal Minds’ season 11 spoilers: Joe Mantegna back as director; Michael Irvin to guest star

How about this for some cool “Criminal Minds” news to kick off the weekend? Series star Joe Mantegna (David Rossi) is directing another episode! He’s been working on it for several days now, and there are a pair of separate teases from his and the production office’s Twitter accounts below.

We shouldn’t skimp over the fact here that one of these two teases specifically features Mantegna directing former Dallas Cowboys great and current broadcaster Michael Irvin. With CBS broadcasting Thursday Night Football this year, it could make for another opportunity to see crossovers with many popular NFL stars past and present appearing on various network shows.

Mantegna’s IMDb page lists his upcoming episode as “‘Til Death Do Us Part,” which is at present the third episode of season 11. This is the third time that he has taken on this role as director for the series, and hopefully it will not be his last. We would like it to become a tradition for him to get to direct at least one episode a season (provided he wants to) for the rest of the series’ run on CBS.

Joe is also not the only star of “Criminal Minds” with a history directing episodes. Thomas Gibson has also helmed many episodes over the past few years, while Matthew Gray Gubler has gotten behind the camera for a whopping eight installments over the course of the series’ run. The new season of the show will premiere come Wednesday, September 30, and some other guest stars at present include Aisha Tyler and Marisol Nichols.

Want to see some further news related to season 11 right now? Then be sure to head over to the link here! Also, be sure to sign up right away to book some other great TV news via email courtesy of our official CarterMatt Newsletter. (Photo: CBS.)