CBS
It didn’t take long for Tony Romo to set himself apart from a very crowded pack of athletes who’ve pivoted to broadcasting after retiring when the former Cowboys quarterback joined Jim Nantz in the CBS booth for the first time in 2017.
Romo repeatedly deployed the knowledge he picked up over the course of his 14 seasons playing in the NFL to predict how a play was going to unfold before the ball was snapped, and while “EHHHH I DON’T KNOW JIM!” quickly became a meme among NFL fans, most people agreed he had some solid chemistry with his legendary broadcast partner.
However, Romo eventually proved Harvey Dent was on to something when he uttered the words “You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain.”
The tides began to turn last year as Romo was subjected to mounting criticism for his approach to calling NFL games to a point where a disputed report surfaced that suggested CBS had staged an “intervention” to address the supposed lack of preparation that had attributed to his alleged decline.
I got the chance to ask the retired QB about that particular topic last year during an interview where he suggested the backlash could be attributed to a vocal minority of NFL fans while stating he still has plenty of people in his corner.
Those defenders include Nantz himself, as the broadcasting icon made it clear Romo has his glowing seal of approval during a recent conversation on the SI Media With Jimmy Traina podcast.
Nantz described Romo as “the absolute best” while adding “I have never had better chemistry with anybody in my career than Tony” before taking aim at the critics who’ve targeted his colleague, saying:
“Tony has his way of watching a game. It’s fun. There’s a magnetism with Tony. There’s an excitement. It’s real. Our friendship is real.
We’re doing games during the season, like Buffalo-Kansas City, not a whimper. By the way, those were playoff ratings. We did a Thanksgiving Day game which was the most-watched game of the year I think in the regular season. One or two, anyway. We had the Christmas afternoon game, 100% national, gigantic audience.
We didn’t do any of these games in January any different than we did during the regular season. So why all of a sudden are people taking cheap shots? I don’t get it.”
It’s safe to say Nantz doesn’t think Romo needs to change a thing, but it will still be interesting to see if the latter reworks his approach when the upcoming season kicks off.