Phil Simms will go from the booth into the CBS studio, as he will replace Tony Gonzalez on NFL Today for the 2017 NFL season and beyond.
When CBS went off its rocker to hire former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo to be the No. 1 football analyst for their NFL telecasts, many wondered where the guy he replaced in Phil Simms would land.
Simms had been in the CBS booth since 1998 covering predominantly the AFC with Jim Nantz. He was a former two-time Super Bowl Champion in his playing days with the New York Giants. However, CBS has opted to go in a different direction in the booth with Romo replacing Simms.
It was only fitting that Simms replaced another guy named Tony after he got replaced by a guy named Tony. According to John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal, “CBS moves Phil Simms to its ‘NFL Today’ studio. He takes the seat vacated by Tony Gonzalez last month.”
It wasn’t like CBS was going to let its former No. 1 football analyst walk out the door for nothing. Gonzalez had been a good member in the CBS studio, but has decided to leave television at least temporarily.
Simms would join James Brown, Bill Cowher, Boomer Esiason and Bart Scott in the studio for CBS on fall Sundays. He would give the studio show a fresh perspective from a guy that had been calling games in the NFL booth for the last 20 years.
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It’s good to see that CBS had a plan in place to keep Simms all along. Had the television network let him go, ESPN, FOX and NBC would have chomped at the bit to land him on their NFL coverage team.