When Tony Romo made his debut as the lead NFL analyst for CBS back in 2017, he was shockingly good at the job. The former Cowboys quarterback was engaging in the booth and appeared to put in the work, which led to insightful analysis and breaking down plays before they happened.
It honestly appeared that CBS had itself a superstar to pair with Jim Nantz, but those days have come and gone with Romo’s performance declining in each season.
With time, Romo has become increasingly separated from the NFL game that he was so familiar with in his debut announcing season. And rather than meticulously preparing to learn the evolving nuances of the game, Romo has resorted to hyperbole, noises and a million “I don’t know, Jim”s in the place of actual analysis.
Fans have, of course, noticed the decline. As it turns out, so has CBS.
CBS had an "intervention" this past offseason for Romo
According to the New York Post’s Andrew Marchand, CBS had grown so alarmed with Romo’s faltering performance that network execs urged him to take the job more seriously and actually prepare.
That meeting reportedly took place before the season, and all it did was arguably make Romo worse at his job. Marchand also said that play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz isn’t going to take it upon himself to push Romo in the right direction.
CLIP: Jim Nantz is about Jim Nantz ..
— Andrew Marchand (@AndrewMarchand) February 1, 2023
He said:
“Nantz is about Nantz. He’s been like that for a long time. We’ve seen it in the postgame where he does the broadcast and he’s going down and doing the podium. I don’t understand why Tracy Wolfson or someone else can’t do that. That doesn’t make sense to me. They have everyone there too. But it’s Nantz all the time. And so, that’s number one. Number two is when you struggle — we heard about this, this is the narrative out of CBS when Romo was getting all the publicity, and you heard from Nantz’s side that Nantz was the one creating Romo. And so, the issue now is why isn’t Nantz helping Romo get to this next level. All that said, Tony Romo needs to study more. He needs to be better prepared because as you move away from the sidelines, not studying tape, he needs to do more work. I know CBS is aware of this. They tried an intervention last offseason. They anticipated this, so that’s a credit to them, people in charge there. But it has not gotten better, and it’s a problem.”
With the Super Bowl on Fox, Romo’s work in the booth is done for this season. That will give him time to re-think his approach for next season because something clearly needs to change. And with Greg Olsen’s success (and Tom Brady’s upcoming addition to Fox), the competition is only going to get stronger.
