Tony Romo’s Toby Keith reference might have been the highlight of his Week 1

There’s a lot of attention on NFL on CBS lead analyst Tony Romo this season. Romo took significant criticism in 2021 and 2022 in particular, and while he recently dismissed that with “There’s agendas. People like clicks,” Romo reportedly received “an intervention” from CBS executives last offseason (CBS said that report was a “mischaracterization” of the execs’ visits with Romo). And after a 2022 season filled with criticism, and an offseason filled with addressing that criticism, exactly how Romo did on his first broadcast (Sunday’s Philadelphia Eagles-New England Patriots game) was always going to be under the microscope.

But Romo seemed to generally do fine in that first game. And he got off at least one particularly good line, referencing Toby Keith while shouting out a potential impact from Eagles’ veteran defensive tackle Fletcher Cox . That came right before Cox recorded an important tackle:

The reference is to Keith’s “As Good As I Once Was,” which has exactly those lyrics at one point. And Cox wound up making another big play on the next snap:

Beyond that, Romo drew some attention for some comments on Tom Brady:

His comments praising the Eagles drew some notice as well:

And some remarks he made for the NFL on CBS’ TikTok account on the Patriots also got some discussion:

The Eagles picked up a 25-20 road win over the Patriots Sunday. And for Romo, this broadcast looked like at least a relative win. There was still some social media criticism of him, but it seemed dialed down compared to some of what we saw in 2021 and 2022. The focus on him certainly isn’t going away after one week, but it’s notable that the conversation around him seems at least a little more positive for now.

[Awful Announcing on Twitter]