For two weeks, I saw on Twitter and on podcasts the media give Tony Romo all of the kudos in the world. Therefore, I looked forward to him calling the Cincinnati Bengals-Green Bay Packers game. I would get to see firsthand of what kind of broadcaster he was in his young career. My thoughts coming away from the game were I don’t get what’s all of the excitement about for Romo? This isn’t one of those moments where a person is trying to be contrarian in 2017, rather, a fair assessment of the first-year color analyst who still has some work to do.

Where I found Romo to be annoying and over-the-top was anything that involved a reaction. He seemed overly excited about plays happening or yelling at players like Andy Dalton like he called the game from the sidelines. The pitch on his voice did not actually come across with any sort of real effect. Romo beat into the ground how Bill Lazor could change things in Cincinnati, and he continually quoted about Lazor’s offense to the point where a random person would think he coaches the Bengals, not Marvin Lewis. Romo still has a ton of work to do in this department.

But yes, he’s better than Phil Simms. It’s a massive upgrade. Simms would offer zero analysis, and Romo does a good job giving you some football knowledge while watching the game. My favorite part of the Romo broadcast had to be the Run-Play Option calls or RPO’s from both teams. I thought that was effective use of the broadcast as well as the comment about how Cincinnati needed a big play to start overtime only to run it for negative yards.

Hopefully, the national media will start seeing some of the flaws around Romo because it’s truly annoying to see how much people fellate him each week for an average start to his career. Great analysis, but he reacts like a Texas high school colo analyst reliving his glory days at Dillon high school.

Charlie.