Barring a poly, you’d be hard pressed to get Phil Simms and Jim Nantz to admit it, but the broadcast team from Thursday night’s Ravens-Steelers battle have themselves a huge man-crush.
Big. Freaking. Ben.
The pair spent more time discussing Ben/Ben’s absence/What would Ben do? than they did any of the following:
-Mike Vick (the actual QB playing)
-Flacco (the other QB on the field)
-Anybody else of significance in the NFL
Let’s throw some validation at this accusation to gain some credibility, shall we?
Ben was front and center with the opening kick, and the folks working the cameras made sure that his presence was known throughout the game. Here’s the breakdown by quarter of Ben camera shots, giving Nantz and Simms more opportunities to delve deeper into their bromance with Ben.
That’s just an obscene amount of cutaways to a guy who’s not even in the game. At that frequency, Phil and Jim should’ve just requested that the NFL Network drop a Picture-in-Picture constant feed of Ben in the top corner of their broadcast. Something like this maybe?
Maybe Phil could continue to call the game while Nantz gave us a play by play of Ben cheering, or shaking his head, or eating a cheeseburger…
(No bathroom stall jokes- we’re keeping it clean!)
And some of you (likely none of you, unless we’ve attracted the rare ‘Steeler troll’ who lurks the internet in search of anti-Steeler blogs, where they like to drop references to rings like it matters today) may suggest that showing Ben was acceptable because his presence was missed on the field.
Legit.
EXCEPT, there’s this guy on the Ravens named Terrell Suggs who happened to be absent from this match. Understanding that Sizzle was not at the game like Ben, my thought would be that perhaps Simms and Nantz would mention his absence, along with a cut to last year when Sizzle nabbed an INT between his legs.
Instead, we get a singular reference to Suggs as MIA due to an Achilles tear… at the end of the 3rd quarter for what sounded to be maybe 3 seconds of discussion at best. In comparison, Simms and Nantz spent the entire first three quarters of the game gushing about Ben like a couple of preteen gossip queens, all the while panning over to Ben 12 times before even mentioning Sizzle.
At the end of the day, it was a nauseating lovefest for Big Ben that had me actually agreeing with Flacco, wishing Ben was actually in the game so I didn’t feel that Nantz and Simms were taking too much away from the play on the field.
Fortunately for the broadcast team, I’m sure they got to walk down to hang out with Ben after the game, tell him how sorry they were for the loss, and ask for some autographs like the groupies they are.
Graphic of the Game
Just went you thought the horror movie was over with the Ravens victorious and the game concluded, it appears Simms and Nantz needed to get their Big Ben fix one final time. This time though, they gave us Ravens fans a doozy of a shot!
Care to throw us a caption? (Insert your caption below and the one with the most likes will receive a LG Tone Blue Tooth value at $100 courtesy of Eastern Wireless.)
Bonus Graphic of the Game
Oh Webby… It was hard to catch in live action, but the replay made it very clear: Webb either needs glasses, or he saw a phantom Steeler and tackled the wrong guy.
