New England Patriots
Let’s just say Nantz hasn’t said, “Hello, friends,” to Patriots fans very often since the end of the team’s dynasty. He and analyst Tony Romo last called a Patriots game in Week 6 of the 2023 season.
One illuminating way to gauge how your favorite football team is perceived around the NFL is to look at which announcer teams television networks deploy to call their Sunday games.
During the two-decade dynasty, Jim Nantz called so many Patriots games — first with analyst Phil Simms on CBS’s top team for 13 seasons, then with Tony Romo beginning in 2017 — that a moment was spent acknowledging his 100th broadcast of a New England contest during an October 2020 matchup with the 49ers.
Since the dynasty ended, however? Let’s just say that Nantz hasn’t said, “Hello, friends,” to Patriots viewers very often.
In fact, Sunday’s anticipated matchup with the Buccaneers in Tampa will be the first time Nantz and Romo call a Patriots game in more than two years.
Their most recent one came in Week 6 of the 2023 season, a 21-17 road loss to the Raiders. The Patriots dropped to 1-5 for the first time since 1995, and Nantz and Romo haven’t been around since.
Meanwhile, CBS’s No. 5 team of Spero Dedes and Adam Archuleta has called eight Patriots games in that span.
That Nantz and Romo are calling this game is a validation in a way that the Patriots, with quarterback Drake Maye and coach Mike Vrabel at the forefront, have a renewed relevance in the NFL pecking order.
During a phone conversation Tuesday, Nantz said he and Romo were looking forward to getting reacquainted with the Patriots.
“Tony and I were joking about how long it’s been,” said Nantz. “I don’t know if us calling the game validates anything, but we were thrilled to find out we were doing this one when we got the schedule.”
Nantz said the duo initially thought when the schedule was released over the summer that it would have a different game in Week 10.
“That Bills-Dolphins game was sort of a placeholder game when the schedule came out,” said Nantz. “It’s the game our crew internally thought we would have, but with the way Miami’s season has gone [the Dolphins are 2-7], we got turned off that game to this game weeks ago, and that’s the logical thing to do.”
Nantz said he’s looking forward to calling one of Maye’s games for the first time. He’s known Maye for a few years, even before he was drafted by the Patriots. They have the same agent, Alan Zucker at Excel Sports Management.
“I had dinner with Drake and his dad, Mark, early in the week leading up to Super Bowl [LVIII] in Las Vegas,” said Nantz, who also called Maye’s brother Luke’s legendary winning basket to lift the North Carolina men’s basketball team over Kentucky in the Elite Eight of the 2017 NCAA Tournament. “We got to know him a little, and you can’t help but instantly realize this kid has moxie and some great qualities as a person. Just a very down-to-earth guy.”
Nantz reminisced about those dozens of trips to Foxborough during the Brady/Belichick heyday, joking that he eventually moved from California to Tennessee just to cut down on the cross-country flights to New England.
“I really was fortunate to have a chance to document so many of those games,” he said. “It truly was a way of life for me.”
Nantz actually hasn’t called a Patriots home game since the 2023 season opener, a 25-20 loss to the Eagles. He said he’s not sure at this point if he, Romo, and sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson will get to Gillette Stadium during the regular season.
“A lot of slots later in the schedule are spoken for,” he said.
Nantz paused.
“And now, you don’t want to get too far ahead of yourselves, right? But the Patriots are tied for the best record in the league,” he said. “So I think we can say it. We can say it. Maybe we’ll get there for the playoffs.”
Trumpy leaves behind decorated legacy
Bob Trumpy, the former Bengals tight end and longtime NFL broadcaster on NBC, died Nov. 2 at age 80.
Trumpy tends to get overlooked when the conversation turns to enjoyable color analysts of the NFL’s past, but he deserves acknowledgement.
He had a decorated broadcasting career, working with the likes of Dick Enberg and Bob Costas while calling games for NBC — including two Super Bowls — from 1978 until it lost the AFC package to CBS in 1997. He was honored with the Pro Football Hall of Fame’s Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award in 2014.
Trumpy worked quite a few Patriots games back in the day, often with Don Criqui, and he was unapologetically blunt, on the air and off.
In 1988, he revealed to the Globe’s Jack Craig that he had known the Patriots were going to get pummeled by the Bears in Super Bowl XX, and let one notable player know it.
“I had seen the teams early in the year [a 20-7 Bears win in Week 2] when the Pats moved the ball over the 50-yard line only once. So I told Steve Grogan before that game the question was not whether the Pats would win, but whether they would score.”
What was his response?
“Grogan simply replied that he hoped I was wrong,” said Trumpy.
The Bears clobbered the Patriots, 46-10. But hey, they did score first.
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