Items filtered by date: Wednesday, 30 January 2019

Former Dallas Cowboy QB1 now CBS announcer Tony Romo blew minds and drew national headlines due to his uncanny “future reading” ability during the AFC Championship Game as he kept calling plays before they happened, during the Patriot’s victory over the Chiefs (37-31). And now he’ll be calling Super Bowl LIII (53).

Romo was so impressive that CBS immediately offered him a huge raise for him to return as a broadcaster for CBS because NFL teams were actually exploring the possibility of having Romo return to the league as QB. But … I don’t know about that. I mean, Romo is really great as a broadcaster and fans love him but as QB1 he was … well, he was good. Not great. But good. He was a starter for ten years, threw for 35k yards and went 78-49 in the win/loss category and was 50% in the playoffs (never made it to the Super Bowl). So, he was good. But he wasn’t THAT good. I mean, it’s not like he could predict the future during his games, as he appears to be doing as a broadcaster not only the AFC championship game but with numerous games in the past few years (go YouTube “Tony Romo predicts the future”). Which is precisely what the Onion joked about last week with their: “Tony Romo Realizes He Should Have Used Ability To Read Defenses Back When He Was Still Playing.”

But not everyone is as impressed with Romo’s ability to read the game and seemingly predict the future. Former NFL tight end and now writer, Nate Jackson wrote “Let’s All Calm Down about Tony Romo” for Deadspin.com. In it he writes:

“Romo’s predictions were mostly about the Patriots’ offense, and almost all in the second half and overtime. He had a firmer grasp on the Patriots’ offense than he did on the Chiefs’. It seems safe to assume, based on his lack of “predictions” when the Chiefs had the ball, that Romo did not know what plays they would run any more than the rest of us did. This is because the Patriots’ offense is more predictable … As any football game wears on, the playbook shrinks. This is typical of any game: as the thing starts to shake out, a game plan that can be hundreds or thousands of plays shrinks to five or 10 bread-and-butter options. These are plays that are working. Plays that everyone knows. Plays that can be communicated with hand signals. Simple plays. Effective football plays. Recognizing this is not prescience, this is just science.”

This are fair points and Jackson's entire article is good; you should read it (linked above). So, I don't know if Romo is predicting the future or just calling predictable plays but I do feel he was a pretty good QB1 and is a very good announcer (even Nate Jackson agrees with this). This will be his first, but probably not his last Super Bowl appearance.

Sadly, the appearance will not be, as he one day no doubt hoped, as a player, but still. 

The NFL (at least the announcing booth) seems to be in good hands.