ATLANTA — They are highly skilled play-callers, meticulous about their craft and painstakingly prepared for the NFL’s biggest stage.
ATLANTA — They are highly skilled play-callers, meticulous about their craft and painstakingly prepared for the NFL’s biggest stage.
There’s the seasoned veteran at the top of his game, who has deftly navigated every conceivable situation. There’s the rapidly ascending and unflappable newcomer, who has succeeded where so many before him have failed.
And the thing is, neither of them will take a snap or make a coaching decision Sunday.
Jim Nantz and Tony Romo will share the CBS booth for their first Super Bowl broadcast together. Nantz has worked seven of them, five as play-by-play man and two as pregame host. Romo, two years removed from his job as Dallas Cowboys quarterback, is making his first Super Bowl appearance.
The two close friends and golfing buddies sat down this week for a wide-ranging, hour-long interview with The Los Angeles Times.
“I told Tony, he’s already done the game,” Nantz said, referring to the conference title game between New England and Kansas City, the most-watched AFC championship in 42 years, with 53.9 million viewers. “Our ratings in that fourth quarter, by the quarter-hour rating, was a Super Bowl rating. (Turning to Romo,) ‘You’ve already done it.’ ”
Numbers aside, Romo is as relaxed as a Sunday in the South, as unhurried and natural as his Tour-caliber backswing. So he shrugs off all the hubbub about his uncanny predictive ability to decipher where the ball is going before it touches the quarterback’s hands.
“You study something your whole life, you have a little bit of ability to feel like you know something a little bit,” he said.
