When CBS signed Tony Romo to a 10-year contract for a total value of $180 million in late February, 2020, it changed the NFL broadcasting industry forever.
The business sense around the Romo deal for CBS were the forthcoming negotiations for new network TV contracts with the NFL.
CBS was being challenged for Romo’s services. Before signing Joe Buck and Troy Aikman, ESPN sought Romo to be the new face of Monday Night Football.
Romo was a sensation at the time and CBS wanted him on their side when they walked into negotiations with Commissioner Roger Goodell and his lieutenants.
CBS ended up retaining its Sunday package of games, the playoffs and Super Bowls for around $2 billion a year.
Now, though, not even halfway through Romo’s decade-long deal, CBS Sports executives have an issue because Romo and his partner, Jim Nantz, are manning broadcasts that lack chemistry, storytelling, much strategy and levity. It’s routinely discombobulated.
This has left the duo endlessly searching for lifelines. Gene? Tracy? Jay? Anyone?
Gene Steratore is called in for officiating. Tracy Wolfson is on the sideline. And Jay Feely is on call for special teams. It is a lot of support for a booth that approaches $30 million a year in annual pay.
Unlike the old-time familiar combo of Buck and Aikman or the new tandem of Kevin Burkhardt and Greg Olsen, Nantz and Romo don’t sound like best friends at a game, no matter how many times they say each other’s names. It feels more like a nephew spitballing jokes and saying whatever comes into his head, while his uncle is confused on how to react.
Last Sunday, while Nantz nailed the Buffalo late missed field goal with a memorable call – “No, he doesn’t make it! Wide right. The two most dreaded words in Buffalo have surfaced again”– he was mostly off again. He has been late to recognize big plays and mistakenly calling incompletions as catches and vice-versa.
If he weren’t calling the game, Nantz comes across more like he would be in a luxury box than in the stands. Romo, at his best, gives the vibe of someone you’d want to share a beer with in the upper deck. They don’t match up.
Romo started off very good. His analysis during the January, 2019 Chiefs-Patriots’ AFC Championship, where he predicted nearly every play before it happened, was an historic sports broadcasting performance.
At that point, Romo, still just off retirement, knew the players, the formations and his free-wheeling style worked. Now, with his playing career further behind him and without incessantly studying the current game, he is turnover prone.
During the wild-card week of the playoffs, Nantz and Romo worked the Steelers-Bills game. Romo had this revelation about Steelers’ running back Jaylen Warren.
“I’m telling you, when you put the tape on … We know how good [Najee] Harris has been playing, but I didn’t realize they had this 1-2 punch,” Romo said. “We hadn’t seen them this year during a game, but [Warren] consistently hits the hole. Quick, aggressive, has those instincts. This is an outstanding unit.”
Nearly anyone with a fantasy football team realized how good Warren had played all year, averaging 5.3 yards per carry, third-best in the NFL. Surely, a No. 1 NFL TV game analyst, making nearly a million bucks a game, should have an idea before he looked at a little film. It was telling.
Nantz and Romo have trouble meeting the moment together making the analysis often chaotic. During the divisional round, last Sunday in Buffalo, Bills’ coach Sean McDermott, with a fourth-and-five from his team’s own 30 and nearly 13 minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, decided to fake a punt. A gutsy call.
Nantz flatly said: “Fake … [Damar] Hamlin is stopped short.”
Romo then added: “That will be the first turnover. Even though you are not necessarily going to say it. But, to me. that was aggressive”
Not great, but not terrible.
Nantz quickly threw it to one of their lifelines on the sidelines.
“Jay Feely, did you sense that was coming?” Nantz asked.
With no replay, Feely said the Chiefs only had 10 men on the field.
This caused Romo to change up and decide: “You are exactly right, Jay. You know 10 guys. [Drue] Tranquill does an unbelievable job of taking on two blockers and turning it back inside. It’s the right call. They only had six guys inside. You have eight blockers technically. Seven easily. Wow.”
Despite the unevenness of the broadcast, 50 million-plus viewers watched last Sunday night, the most ever for a divisional-round game. For Sunday afternoon’s AFC Championship game between the Chiefs and the Ravens just as many people, if not more, will be listening to Nantz and Romo.
Two weeks after that, in Las Vegas, the duo will be the center of the country’s attention with 100 million viewers, give or take, for the Super Bowl.
At some point, the broadcast can’t be about: Gene? Tracy? Jay?
Jim and Tony need to figure it out — and fast.
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