Tony Romo Responds to Criticism of Broadcasting Style: 'You Can't Please Everyone'

Lead CBS NFL color commentator Tony Romo addressed criticisms of his broadcasting in an interview last week with Connor Toole of BroBible.

"You've gotta stay true to who you are," Romo said. "You can't please everyone. I know that because the number of people who come up to me has quadrupled since the first two or three years.

"The thing is, the people who really love you aren't gonna keep going out of their way to say, 'I love you.' They're not going to keep tweeting 'He's the best' every week, right? So, that goes away and then you hear more negative stuff, but that's just noise."

Romo took a lot of heat for his performance during the Kansas City Chiefs' 23-20 win over the Cincinnati Bengals in the AFC Championship Game, but criticisms had been mounting after he received near universal praise during the first years of his commentating career, which began in 2017.

Sean Keeley of Awful Announcing provided a synopsis:

"Two years ago, Tony Romo was hailed as the next great NFL color commentator, seemingly able to predict plays in real-time and provide interesting analysis of the game. Since then, however, he seems to have devolved into a human catchphrase and exclamation machine who can't even be counted on to be ready to speak when asked a question. Critics are out in full force wondering what happened and his performance on Sunday during the AFC Championship Game didn't do much to quell their concerns."

Andrew Marchand of the New York Post said Wednesday on his podcast with John Ourand of Sports Business Journal (h/t Mike McDaniel of Sports Illustrated) that preparation was an issue and CBS even had an "intervention" before this season.

"Tony Romo needs to study more," Marchand said. "He needs to be better prepared. As you move away from the sidelines, you need to do more work. I know CBS is aware of this. They tried an intervention last offseason. They knew, they anticipated this. That's a credit to them, the people in charge there. But it has not gotten better."

Romo acknowledged in an interview with Jenna Lemoncelli of the Post that he's always trying to evolve.

"Some changes are good, some you're like, 'Ah, I shouldn't do that,'" Romo said last week. "But I always trial and error a bunch, and sometimes it works."

The former Dallas Cowboys quarterback signed a 10-year, $180 million contract before the 2020 season.