Once the 2022 playoffs arrived, the Tony Romo critics reached a fever pitch. His on-air partner, Jim Nantz, recently pushed back.
“I think there was a little bit of a misinformation attempt there to portray him in a not-so-favorable light,” Nantz said on the SI Media with Jimmy Traina podcast. “It was very disappointing. It really got, to me, more steam after the AFC Championship game, which was our last game. And for the life of me, I didn’t understand it. . . . Where was all this outcry during the season? It’s not like we were invisible.”
He’s right. Every week, they worked a regular-season game that drew a large audience. But there’s something different about those truly standalone games, where everyone watching has no other NFL content to absorb. In the playoffs, that one game that is being played at any given time becomes the focal point of all chatter, on social media and elsewhere.
Nantz made a good point in response to that reality.
“We did a Thanksgiving Day game which was the most-watched game of the year I think in the regular season,” Nantz told Traina. “One or two, anyway. We had the Christmas afternoon game, 100-percent 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.”
Through it all, Nantz strongly disagrees with those who have soured on Romo.
“Tony is the best,” Nantz said. “He’s the absolute best. And he’s also one of my best friends. I love the guy. And when somebody starts questioning our chemistry, there’s an agenda there. There is nothing wrong with our chemistry. I have never had better chemistry with anybody in my career than Tony. All you have to do is sit in the booth with us, which people that are covering our business, they’re always welcome to come in and take a look at how we interact between the two of us, on the air, off the air, between plays. It’s amazing. I’m not worried about it.”
Nantz doesn’t really need to worry about it, because he’s not the one being criticized. Romo is catching the brunt of the scrutiny, and it remains to be seen whether the criticism impacts his performance in 2023.
At one point, Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reported that CBS conducted an offseason “intervention” with Romo, in an effort to improve his performance. CBS Sports chairman Sean McManus later denied it.
Whatever may have happened in the past, Romo is now on notice. And with CBS having the Super Bowl this year, Romo will be under more scrutiny than ever before.
It will be interesting to see how he responds. Will he change his approach, or will he continue to be himself?
Nantz clearly would prefer the latter.
“Don’t ask everybody to be the same, by the way,” Nantz told Traina. “Tony does it his own way. I’m talking presentation and everything. 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.”
The money Romo gets is real, too. So if/when the criticism ever gets to him, he should just pull up the banking up on his phone, and count up all the commas and the zeros.
