ATLANTA - "Tony, can you tell us what the weather will be tomorrow?"
No, Tony Romo isn't changing professions, even though he's gotten that question on more than a couple of occasions in the past two weeks.
He's more than comfortable as the lead analyst for CBS's NFL coverage and is excited to be calling his first Super Bowl with legendary play-by-play man Jim Nantz on Sunday.
But during the AFC title game between the Patriots and Chiefs, the former Cowboys quarterback displayed such a knack for recognizing what the offenses were going to do before the play began that Nantz hung the moniker "Romo-strodomous" on his booth partner and it's now a hashtag on social media.
For his part, Romo tried to downplay his powers of prognostication.
"I fee like you're just watching the game," Romo explained on Tuesday. "You have so many years of experience, your passion comes out and you start talking and you just say what you see."
"And you get lucky once in a while."
Nantz was quick to point out that it isn't luck that Romo turned out to be right more often than not when telling the home audience what they were about to see on the field. He added that the enthusiasm viewers here in Romo's voice is genuine.
"He gets fired up about things," Nantz explained. "He's like one of those guys that you went to school with who's always excited! That's Tony. Because it's authentic and real, that's why it works."
Romo gave a detailed explanation of how he arrives at his play predictions on air. They don't just come to him in the moment.
"I'm still looking at it from the quarterback's perspective," Romo said. "You start off with personnel, then you go to formation, then you go to the protection side of it: what's the possibilities? Then you go to situation; you go to the one-on-one matchups."
"Then you start going into mannerisms," Romo continued. "Then you think about schemes and the history of those coaches and what they could or couldn't call, based on down and distance, time and all that stuff."
All this in the span of about 10 seconds. Or, what NFL quarterbacks must ascertain and decide for themselves on every play.
Romo would not give his prediction on who will win here on Sunday, but he did lay out how he thinks the game will end.
"I'm going to go 28-24," Romo said giving a guess as to the final score. "And I think the team that has 24 will have the ball at the end and they don't score."
If Super Bowl LIII ends that way, don't say he didn't tell you so.
