Because I wanted to see the awesomely meaningless Super Bowl XLI preseason rematch and get a sampling of ESPN’s revamped Monday Night Football team, I tuned in to last night’s Bears vs. Colts game — the first half, anyway. I’m not masochistic enough to watch the second half of a preseason game on ESPN.
When the production crew wasn’t missing one of Rex Grossman’s fumbled snaps because they were airing NASCAR promos, I was pleased with two thirds of their broadcast.
I figured it wouldn’t take much for Ron Jaworski to be an improvement over Joe Theismann, but Jaworski really impressed me. He knows his stuff, he delivers it clearly and with authority. He’s going to get better when these games actually count.
Tony Kornheiser is the only thing keeping this from being a real top-notch booth. Kornheiser fixates on things too much during the broadcast. It’s as if you know exactly what he’s going to say before he says it, because he’s said it three times before already. His opening piece about fan and media hypocrisy, comparing perceptions of Peyton Manning as a masterful tactician when he completes a two-yard pass with Rex Grossman who just gets lucky whenever he throws a 30-yard TD strike, was discerning. But then Kornheiser spent the rest of the night engaging in Rex bashing, like he couldn’t wait for Rex to screw up just so he could get in his talking point. Yeah, Rex was fumbly bad last night and deserved criticism, but Kornheiser seemed to delight in it.
The best exchange was when the Colts did an onside kick, which they appeared to legally recover even though illegal touching was called against the Colts. Kornheiser was insisting that the Bears should be fuming that the Colts would attempt something like that so early in a preseason game. Levelheaded Jaws put Kornheiser in his place, saying a preseason game is exactly when you’re supposed to practice that stuff. I guess Tony didn’t get the memo that no one on the field cares about this game, either.
I sense that Kornheiser and Jaworski are going to squabble at lot more this season, and Jaworski’s going to be right 99 out of 100 times. That’s what’s going to make Kornheiser tolerable.
Jaws had to remind Kornheiser about the whole preseason thing again after Grossman fumbled. “If you’re in Chicago, you’re beating yourself in the head with a hammer right now,” Kornheiser said. Well, no they’re not. Because if Bears fans really cared about a preseason game, they’d be Packers fans.