Tony Romo weirdly praised Patrick Mahomes’ ‘instincts’ for a basic incompletion toward Travis Kelce

These days, three-time Super Bowl MVP Patrick Mahomes is the NFL’s unquestioned best quarterback. Almost everything he does on the football field is worthy of commendation because Mahomes is indeed that good.

But CBS’s Tony Romo probably overdid this principle during Sunday’s key AFC battle between the Kansas City Chiefs and Cincinnati Bengals.

In the first quarter, Mahomes missed an open Kelce low on a basic slant pattern over the middle. That’s it. He missed. Even the great ones miss sometimes because nobody’s perfect. It’s really nothing to write home about. Like, at all. Except when CBS went to a replay of the sequence, Romo claimed that Mahomes intentionally threw the ball low (?) toward Kelce to avoid a sack and praised his “instincts” for doing so (???).

Uh, I don’t know how to break this to Romo, but Mahomes had a clean pocket and an open receiver. Mahomes wasn’t trying to live to fight another day. He just flat-out missed Kelce. That’s it:

“This is Mahomes throwing it in the dirt on purpose… He’s got such great instincts… It’s a winning play.” – Tony Romo pic.twitter.com/Pcdt97LEU1

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 15, 2024

Given his status as arguably the worst major color analyst in the NFL, I’m not surprised Romo would turn an unintentional incompletion into a short diatribe about how great Mahomes is. The funny thing is that Mahomes doesn’t need this kind of extra, extremely undue praise. He doesn’t need people spinning a fake, short narrative about missing an open playmaker. Because he’ll almost always make up for any mistakes, no matter how big or small.

But I suppose that’s probably par for the course for Romo in the booth.