Tony Romo won’t be reporting to training camp with the Cowboys this month, but he’s still spending the summer working to get ready for the 2017 season.
The difference from past years is that his work is focused on learning how to be a game analyst after stepping away from the game in order to join Jim Nantz in a CBS broadcast booth. He has spent time calling practice games with Nantz and Cowboys radio announcer Brad Sham to correct the fact that he “really didn’t know operationally how anything worked” when he took the job.
In addition to figuring out where to look during plays, Romo is also getting a feel for the right way to offer critiques of players he was competing with and against for the last decade.
“The first two games I did, actually some of my bosses there at CBS told me, ‘You know, we don’t need to be quite that harsh,'” Romo said, via ESPN.com. “So I think that part of it I probably have to find a fine line, because the standard for playing this game is just, it’s high. And to win and win a championship or to get there, I never got a chance to obtain that, and that’s something that I’ll always regret. But at the same time, I understand what it takes to be kind of good. Getting yourself in position to make the playoffs is hard, then to win games there. And to do it like how Tom Brady does is astronomical; [it] doesn’t compute to most of the players because you’re trying to win one … that’s the standard. It’s those players. The Tom Bradys, the Peyton Mannings. That’s what you’re evaluating. And now I have to understand that and come back to that and know that there’s certain things that are easier for some than others and just talk about it.”
Romo said he thinks he is in “a little bit more of a right frame of mind or mindset to be a little bit more successful earlier” than he was as a football player and striking the right balance between being too critical and too light on players will be essential to that.