Jason Witten’s NFL story is a great one. He played all 15 seasons of his career in Dallas and is beloved as one of the all-time Cowboys greats. That was the case, until he retired last year to follow in Tony Romo’s footsteps as a broadcaster.
Tony Romo took some getting used to. It felt like he was on call for mostly all Patriots games, so it’s been forced on me a lot more than I would ordinarily like. There were a lot of ouuuuuu’s and ahhhhhhh’s and Tony wouldn’t just shut the fuck up for a second, but after a year behind the mic even I admit he’s gotten a little better. Is it a coincidence that Jason Witten followed Tony by just a year to potentially make Romo look a little better at his job just like he did on the football field? Probably. But let’s just call a spade a spade: Jason Witten cannot form coherent sentences. A trait hugely important for an NFL in-game announcer.
It’s tough when the entire football watching audience has eyes on you. When Tony Romo’s doing 1pm CBS games we can let a little more slip through the cracks. We can almost tolerate Tony telling us what he would do with 1:36 left in the game needing a TD to win, knowing full well that’s vintage Tony Romo interception time. “What they should do here is…” Well yah Tony if you did that even one time in your career you’d still have a job. I digress.
Last night, Jason Witten was calling for America’s real team, the Patriots, and he continued the downward spiral that is the Monday Night Football broadcast. He has taken over for Jon Gruden almost too seamlessly, and not in a good way. It’s been a clusterfuck to begin with, with the Booger-mobile stealing most of the attention away from Witten’s horrendous broadcasting skills.
Jason Witten is the songbird of our generation (h/t NFLreddit) pic.twitter.com/6vAl1QkWUQ
— Pardon My Take (@PardonMyTake) October 30, 2018
If you watched the Patriots/Bills game last night, you know Jason Witten REALLY wanted the Bills to throw the deep ball down the field, despite starting Derek Anderson who was on his couch eating bon bons 2 weeks ago. He mentioned it no less than 400 times. Every time the Patriots punted and the game was within 6 points, Witten told us the key to the Bills winning would be for them to basically force the ball down the field regardless of the coverage. It appeared Derek Anderson started listening when he threw a pick six (the first Patriots pick six in 40 games) directly to Devin McCourty for an 84 yard touchdown in the opposite direction. Not a peep from Witten about the deep ball after that.
“Don’t know what they’re going to do. I expect one to come” – Jason Witten pic.twitter.com/M2uUVU0Prc
— Vikings Blogger (@firstandskol) October 30, 2018
His other favorite technique is to just randomly mention games he has played in which serves no purpose other than for us, the viewer, to know that he used to play football. Did you know it had been a long time since the Bills played on MNF? Well within the first 2 minutes of the pregame broadcast we learned who other than Jason Witten played the last time the Bills played on Monday Night Football. What a useless coincidence!
Inarguably, the hardest part of the broadcast for Jason Witten is forming sentences. To be fair, he was hit in the head many times during his NFL career and I’m sure has some form of CTE but that just can’t be good enough of an excuse. When they cut to Jason in the booth talking, you can visibly see him struggling to put together a sentence. He’s thinking of the words before he says them, only the words that come out don’t make any sense either.
Luckily we live in a time where the world’s best free website Twitter.com has a pulse on the enigma that is Jason Witten. My new favorite account Shit Jason Witten Says (@jasonwittenMNF) has been keeping track of the best of the best.
Perhaps the most infamous (so far) was the “rabbit game”:
“He pulls another rabbit out of his head”
Others include:
“Knowing he is going to move the meat of the weight”
“And its driving Ms. Daisy into the endzone”
“That’s what we call the ol okie doke right there boys”
I can’t decide if I want more or less Jason Witten in my life. True, he might not actually be good at his job…but it is for sure entertaining. As his more vocal fans start to come out of the woodworks, who knows how long this could last. Hopefully not another 15 years.
I think @JasonWitten is doing a great job commentating he’s just under more of a miscroscope because of the legend he is 🚀
— Taylor Gabriel (@TGdadon1) October 30, 2018
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Just spit balling here but you should cut off Jason whittens dick
no dick is safe