Romo Replacing Simms in CBS Booth: Praise All Gods!!!

reggiecleveland

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It is surprising. The first part of this thread was a denate on whether he was really a big time QB or not. This isn't like Peyton going to the top of the broadcast ladder, it is Tony Romo. I mean at best he is an under appreciated player.

Maybe Dallas has lots of fans.

Also my opinion is the color guy doesn't matter. I am not even hard core about football, but i can find out more by reading online, even following the gamethread than the announcers give most of the time.
 

SMU_Sox

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I am not a Cowboys fan. I'm a Patriots fan who has happened to live in Texas for the end of the Bledsoe era (I grew up with Bledsoe being a favorite) and the entire Romo era. There is no doubt in my mind that Romo belongs in the hall of the very good. He consistently passed my eyeball test.

Pro football reference's AV is an interesting stat. Romo is tied for 222nd all time for AV. Among QBs he is 44th. Every single year he started more than 6 games (so excluding 2015 and 2010) he was top 11 in both passing DVOA and passing DYAR for QBs. If you look at all the traditional and advanced stats we have it is hard to find ones that don't indicate Romo belongs in the hall of the very good. The problem is he played QB for Dallas and had a few bounces go against him. He never played on a team with an elite defense (although from 2006-2010 the Cowboys had an averageish defense). He's a polarizing figure but one I use as a litmus test for other football fans. How you feel about Romo tells me a lot about how you analyze and process information in general and for football.
 

joe dokes

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So male football fans will be tuning in to see Romo's pretty face every Sunday?
Just the same way they've been glued to Phil Simms riveting insightful analysis.
Male football fan s will watch if the announcers were Gilbert Gottfried and Koko.

CBS landed the most famous ex player available, in a world where,
"That's a courageous golf shot, Rog," wins awards.

Some CBS exec is getting high fives and a new bathroom for the good pr. And a few rounds of golf with Jim and Tony.

And if he's a shitty trainwreck people will tune in for the trainwreck.
 

BigSoxFan

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Just the same way they've been glued to Phil Simms riveting insightful analysis.
Male football fan s will watch if the announcers were Gilbert Gottfried and Koko.

CBS landed the most famous ex player available, in a world where,
"That's a courageous golf shot, Rog," wins awards.

Some CBS exec is getting high fives and a new bathroom for the good pr. And a few rounds of golf with Jim and Tony.

And if he's a shitty trainwreck people will tune in for the trainwreck.
I am not arguing against any of this. I just happen to think Romo might be good at it.
 

Devizier

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Honestly haven't listened to games with the sound on in quite some time. The commentary is a relic of days when the image quality was bad and there was no information available online (or elsewhere).
 

8slim

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Honestly haven't listened to games with the sound on in quite some time. The commentary is a relic of days when the image quality was bad and there was no information available online (or elsewhere).
But at the very least the crowd noise adds to the experience, no?
 

Papelbon's Poutine

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Honestly haven't listened to games with the sound on in quite some time. The commentary is a relic of days when the image quality was bad and there was no information available online (or elsewhere).
Wait, you legit just mute the TV? That's, uh, weird man. Do you put on music or something or do you make everyone in the house be quiet?
 

Papelbon's Poutine

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Just the same way they've been glued to Phil Simms riveting insightful analysis.
Male football fan s will watch if the announcers were Gilbert Gottfried and Koko.

CBS landed the most famous ex player available, in a world where,
"That's a courageous golf shot, Rog," wins awards.

Some CBS exec is getting high fives and a new bathroom for the good pr. And a few rounds of golf with Jim and Tony.

And if he's a shitty trainwreck people will tune in for the trainwreck.
I would seriously love to hear Gilbert call a game. That would be fun.
 

TFisNEXT

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It's a little surprising he's instantly on the #1 team....though I recall with Troy Aikman, he was on the #1 team after only 1 season. Though you can certainly make an argument that seeing Aikman for one season before putting him on the #1 team with Joe Buck was a huge step that CBS is omitting.

I agree that the bar is pretty low for Romo to clear though. Simms has been declining for a while. Romo was always a very technical student of the game as Parcells used to rave about, so it should play well into being the color guy.
 

dcmissle

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Wait, you legit just mute the TV? That's, uh, weird man. Do you put on music or something or do you make everyone in the house be quiet?
He is not alone. I mute the broadcasts often. To avoid Nantz' transparent rooting for whoever the Pats' may be playing, Simms' banalities, Collinsworth's ruining a Super Bowl and tiresome Sonny Crockett channels Bob Costas routine (as if there is anything really interesting about either) and so forth. I enjoy few of them. Tirico is great. Fox's #1 team is capable and tolerable, though Aikman occasionally grates, Al Michaels is a familiar and comfortable selection from the antique aisle. Most of the rest piss me off. Silence can be golden.
 

edmunddantes

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Who is on the bench at CBS that is getting unfairly bypassed by Romo taking the gig?

Dan Fouts
Trent Green
Rich Gannon
Solomon Wilcots

The bar currently set by Simms is ultra low. If Romo can remember which teams are playing and not curse, he will be a passable upgrade.
The times I've heard Gannon he's been really good, but it may be a small sample size.
 

Van Everyman

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Agree – I like Gannon as well.

It's interesting to think that there may be a shelf life to the color position. We've all gotten familiar with it with Remy in baseball – up until about two years ago, he'd been coasting for more than a decade. Simms was excellent back in the day. Fouts seemed to be on the path to being excellent and suddenly fell off a cliff the last year or so – he's unlistenably bad now.

All that said, giving Romo the top slot seems like a disaster in the making. Just because a guy has all five tools doesn't mean you promote him to the show.
 

Bosoxen

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Sure, maybe Romo looked inside himself and suddenly found that he lacked the passion or the body to be an NFL QB any longer. But I have a feeling he would have said so, in great detail. Instead, the day's news focuses on discussing Romo's broadcasting chops, rather than what remaining value he may have had on the field.
I think you're WAY overthinking this. Let's try the Occam's Razor explanation:

CBS offer in hand, Romo discusses "only trade options" with other teams and discovers that the amount of money he'd get from a free agent contract is not worth putting his 37 year-old ass on the line. He decides the CBS offer is best for his body, his financial future (this offer wasn't going to be on the table for very long) and his family. Now, instead of taking a beating every day from August through January, he gets to spend more time with his family. For his troubles he gets a huge bag of cash and he instantly becomes one of the most powerful men in sports media.

Frankly, he would have been stupid to pass up this offer.

How you feel about Romo tells me a lot about how you analyze and process information in general and for football.
:fonz:
 

Soxy

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But at the very least the crowd noise adds to the experience, no?
I haven't done this in a while but if you have a surround sound setup, you can just unplug the center channel. You'll still get the crowd noise but it cuts out all of the commentary. I remember doing this for almost the entirety of the 2008 ALCS due to Chip Caray.
 

dcmissle

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The last few times I saw Romo, he appeared old and fragile. Not to the pathetic levels sadly reached in their last days by Unitas and Namath, but clearly not up to it either. It's too bad that he never reached a SB and that for so many years there was a mismatch between his performance level and the team's. Jerry's stubbornness screwed him; maybe that explains in part the $5 million good-bye handshake. But you can't live might have beens, and I didn't have the sense that he could any longer perform at a high level through a season. Good choice.
 

InstaFace

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I think you're WAY overthinking this. Let's try the Occam's Razor explanation:

CBS offer in hand, Romo discusses "only trade options" with other teams and discovers that the amount of money he'd get from a free agent contract is not worth putting his 37 year-old ass on the line. He decides the CBS offer is best for his body, his financial future (this offer wasn't going to be on the table for very long) and his family. Now, instead of taking a beating every day from August through January, he gets to spend more time with his family. For his troubles he gets a huge bag of cash and he instantly becomes one of the most powerful men in sports media.

Frankly, he would have been stupid to pass up this offer.
That may well be, but if he was indeed eager to play for Houston, and they were eager to have him, there's no way he'd be offered a contract for less than $10M. The average salary of starting NFL QBs who are not on their rookie contract is something like $19.5M, and that includes the likes of Mike Glennon and Sam Bradford. There's simply no way an on-air offer from CBS was in the same order of magnitude. #1 color commentators make $500k-$2M.

If his body couldn't take it anymore, what was the december cup of coffee about? And why didn't he say as much, or anything approaching that, in his rambling thank you video? And why haven't we heard that explicitly in the retirement announcements? It was all platitudes and PR statements. But last we heard from the man on the subject was in November:

"If you think for a second that I don't want to be out there, than you've probably never felt the ecstasy of competing and winning. That hasn't left me. In fact, it may burn more now than ever. It's not always easy to watch and I think anyone who has been in this position understands that."

I'm just as confused by this move as Skip Bayless is, which is among the more horrifying sentences I've ever typed.
 

TFisNEXT

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I don't think it's that perplexing. Romo obviously felt he could still play and probably can. But perhaps he mulled over the whole process of learning a new offense, the physical demands of the game at his age, and the CBS offer all together rather than each one individually and determined he was better off hanging them up. He clearly wants to go into broadcasting and the CBS offer was something that was likely not to be available in 1-3 years when he was going to call it quits anyway. I think a combination of those factors made the decision even though each individual one wasn't likely to sway him into retirement.

If Dak Prescott got hit by a bus after the Green Bay game, I'm sure it would be a lot different.
 

Phil Plantier

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I think pundits are underestimating the Jerry Jones side of this: since Romo has "retired," Jones gets to extract an asset from the team who wants to bring him out of retirement. In other words, for the Cowboys, this is better than simply cutting him.

I'm trying to decide if this episode is reproducible - if owners could line up players with their dream post-career job and engineer them there to retain control over them. If so, it would be an interesting loophole for teams to leverage.
 

lexrageorge

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That may well be, but if he was indeed eager to play for Houston, and they were eager to have him, there's no way he'd be offered a contract for less than $10M. The average salary of starting NFL QBs who are not on their rookie contract is something like $19.5M, and that includes the likes of Mike Glennon and Sam Bradford. There's simply no way an on-air offer from CBS was in the same order of magnitude. #1 color commentators make $500k-$2M.

If his body couldn't take it anymore, what was the december cup of coffee about? And why didn't he say as much, or anything approaching that, in his rambling thank you video? And why haven't we heard that explicitly in the retirement announcements? It was all platitudes and PR statements. But last we heard from the man on the subject was in November:

"If you think for a second that I don't want to be out there, than you've probably never felt the ecstasy of competing and winning. That hasn't left me. In fact, it may burn more now than ever. It's not always easy to watch and I think anyone who has been in this position understands that."

I'm just as confused by this move as Skip Bayless is, which is among the more horrifying sentences I've ever typed.
I still think you're over complicating this.

Last season, Romo wanted to play. He probably still wants to play deep down inside. But he was going to have to go through a lot to play for a different team, and at some point he may have decided that the CBS gig sounds exciting. He may very well feel he has all the money he needs, so why not do something that will be markedly easier on his soon to be 38 year old body? And the chances of a season with a new team either (a) making much difference in his HoF chances; or (b) winning a Super Bowl are not that high, especially when you consider the competition Houston would have to face (aka, the Texans seem a long way removed from the Patriots).

Jones didn't have to release him, or even designate him a post-June 1st cut if he didn't want to. And the trade market just isn't there for reasons stated. Maybe Romo is extremely pissed at Jones, but if he really wants to go into broadcasting, I can see why he would bite his tongue on the subject, at least for now.
 

DJnVa

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Wait, you legit just mute the TV? That's, uh, weird man. Do you put on music or something or do you make everyone in the house be quiet?
I do this at times as well. Not sure why you think that would mean we'd make everyone in the house be quiet.

I just don't think announcers add much. If something interesting happens, or maybe a replay challenge, I'll unmute. I don't need PBP if I'm at a sporting event, so I don't need it when I'm at home or at a sports bar watching.
 

InstaFace

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Jones didn't "have to release him" in the same way I didn't "have to find a replacement" when my roommate moved out a few years ago. Yeah, in theory I could have afforded it, but that would have been a stupid waste of money to no real gain. Practically speaking, with a $24M cap hit, they had to trade or release him if he wasn't going to be their starting QB.

Maybe Romo is in his first-choice situation now, I just find that less likely than the rest of you do.
 

TFisNEXT

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Jones didn't "have to release him" in the same way I didn't "have to find a replacement" when my roommate moved out a few years ago. Yeah, in theory I could have afforded it, but that would have been a stupid waste of money to no real gain. Practically speaking, with a $24M cap hit, they had to trade or release him if he wasn't going to be their starting QB.

Maybe Romo is in his first-choice situation now, I just find that less likely than the rest of you do.
The Cowboys saved cap space in 2017 by waiting to release him after June 1st. Why wouldn't Jones wait once he wasn't content with any trade offers?
 

Bosoxen

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If his body couldn't take it anymore, what was the december cup of coffee about?
Considering that was over four months ago, I'm pretty comfortable in saying things have changed since then.

And why didn't he say as much, or anything approaching that, in his rambling thank you video?
Because at that point he still had an eye towards playing somewhere. What little trade leverage he and the Cowboys had at that point would have gone POOF.

And why haven't we heard that explicitly in the retirement announcements?
Beats me. Does that automatically make the situation fraught with nefarious motives? If so, I say once again, the burden of proof is on you.

I'm just as confused by this move as Skip Bayless is, which is among the more horrifying sentences I've ever typed.
I can't tell whether you're the world's worst troll or you're being deliberately obtuse.
 

InstaFace

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Look, you won't see me on the news stalking Tony Romo, following him around shouting "WHAT DID JERRY DO TO YOU?!". And I have no proof beyond the chain of events I catalogued which in total make me a little suspicious, and said so upfront. There's just a bunch of stuff here that is atypical and way less consonant than it normally is when it comes to star athlete retirements. There may well be a benign explanation (like, he was genuinely waffling on retirement for months), and I'd go so far as to say that's likely. The whole process just seemed odd, like Kremlinologists reporting mutually exclusive stories for months on end.

I can't tell whether you're the world's worst troll or you're being deliberately obtuse.
The next time I "troll" will be my first. That's a bit more insulting than I think I deserve. Who pissed in your cheerios?
 

Al Zarilla

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He is not alone. I mute the broadcasts often. To avoid Nantz' transparent rooting for whoever the Pats' may be playing, Simms' banalities, Collinsworth's ruining a Super Bowl and tiresome Sonny Crockett channels Bob Costas routine (as if there is anything really interesting about either) and so forth. I enjoy few of them. Tirico is great. Fox's #1 team is capable and tolerable, though Aikman occasionally grates, Al Michaels is a familiar and comfortable selection from the antique aisle. Most of the rest piss me off. Silence can be golden.
Man, I couldn't disagree much more on two of those guys, so I guess I agree on the others. For me, Tirico has no life or excitement to him. A really old baseball teletype transcript would be as useful to me. Collinsworth, OTOH, digs out more neat details on plays and gets them replayed for us than any other three color guys combined. A crackback block that didn't get called, or a guard taking on and beating two defenders on the same play...I know he was a pain in the ass about Brady with d-gate, and his looking him right in the eye in his SB XLIX commentary. That was bad for us NE fans. Still, I hope Collinsworth does football commentary for as long as I'm watching.
 

Oil Can Dan

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Look, you won't see me on the news stalking Tony Romo, following him around shouting "WHAT DID JERRY DO TO YOU?!". And I have no proof beyond the chain of events I catalogued which in total make me a little suspicious, and said so upfront. There's just a bunch of stuff here that is atypical and way less consonant than it normally is when it comes to star athlete retirements. There may well be a benign explanation (like, he was genuinely waffling on retirement for months), and I'd go so far as to say that's likely. The whole process just seemed odd, like Kremlinologists reporting mutually exclusive stories for months on end.
I totally believe that Romo's first choice was to play for Houston. I think that option has/had a shelf life though, and JJ gave zero fucks about that. JJ did what was best for his franchise - hold the asset on the off chance that Houston (or Denver, or whoever) gives up *something* of value, and short of that just hold on until it suited you to cut him. The thing is that Romo's odds of success for a new team are very time sensitive. If JJ was really going to hold on to Romo until training camp then it wasn't going to work in any event. Or it was much less likely to work.

Whatever. JJ didn't do anything *wrong* here, but I think it's a dick move. And yeah, maybe Romo was just spending all this time really contemplating the retire/play decision but I strongly suspect that had Romo been cut loose on day 1 of free agency that he's a Texan right now.

All that said, I'm glad I can like Tony Romo now. I've got so much respect for how he played and not only how he handled himself overall but how he handled himself during some of those really bad times. Dude is a total class act that was always hard to not like. Even the crazies loved him...

 

ifmanis5

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If anyone cares about Simms, he was not fired by CBS and is still under contract with them. There is an opening for the studio show but the #2 analyst for games position is filled by Fouts. The #2 slot is open at FOX and I'm guessing CBS would let him go if he wanted out. Any way you slice it, he'll have to swallow some pride if he wants to stay in the booth as a color guy.
 

BigJimEd

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If Houston or Denver wanted him, they could have gave up something. 14M is a pretty good number for a starting QB. Trade for him, get him in early and learn the system.

Was there any actual reports of any team making Dallas an offer? If they were hoping to grab Romo when he was released then it would be pretty short sighted to not at least discuss a trade.
 

ifmanis5

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Skip Bayless hot take, anyone? http://www.mediaite.com/online/sound-and-fury-signifying-nothing-skip-bayless-had-a-scorching-take-on-tony-romos-retirement/

“This sums up Tony Romo’s career,” Bayless said, preparing to quote the Bard. “‘A tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury signifying nothing.'”

“I defended him for years on TV,” Bayless said. “Just because I’m a Cowboys fan. And I tried to love him, and I tried to embrace him. And he always left me a little disappointed and a whole lot frustrated.”
 

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lexrageorge

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The next time Skip Bayless says something intelligent will be the first. I believe this fact is common knowledge.
 

E5 Yaz

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The next time Skip Bayless says something intelligent will be the first. I believe this fact is common knowledge.
I'm pretty sure there have been multiple warnings about posting anything Bayless says. It's an amendment to the Chao Rule.
 

CoffeeNerdness

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Chris Simms whines.

http://www.sportingnews.com/nfl/news/chris-simms-son-phil-simms-jim-nantz-cbs-sports-tony-romo-nfl-on-cbs/1ljrws9dfff9u1x4oe7yzrld69

"I do think the Thursday-Sunday game-calling wore him out," Chris Simms said. "I mean, it’s going to wear anybody out. Nobody wants to do double duty. That traveling. The amount of coaches you’ve got to talk to. You’ve got to remember four No. 55s for the week. You have to remember four different game plans on defense, what their little clues were and all those things."
Sounds rough. : (
 

Bosoxen

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Those takes were extremely warm.
That's an understatement. I got third-degree burns just from the opening paragraph.

I'm not a fan of linking ESPN but this is a far more balanced perspective:

...eulogizing Romo's NFL tenure is difficult because he really has been several different players over the course of his 14 seasons in the league. Most Romo takes, particularly the critical ones, focus exclusively on one of those stretches from his career to the detriment of the truth.
Most importantly, it's free of any content from Skip Bayless. I smelled his presence a mile away and didn't make it past reading the aforementioned first paragraph of that Deadspin piece.
 

InstaFace

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Did no one else interpret that piece as tongue-in-cheek, Magary mocking his own quasi-profession? Yeah, all those takes were hot as shit, that's been the experience of Tony Romo his entire career. It's sad but accurate commentary as to what he's had to deal with for the last decade.

Barnwell's article is both sincere and excellent. I just couldn't let Romo retire without poking fun at the absolutely abhorrent, groupthink-driven, knee-jerk way Romo was covered in the press his entire career. I wonder if Roger Staubach ever got the kind of crap Romo did.
 

tims4wins

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Does anyone actually watch the pregame shows? As a game analyst, audiences are forced to listen to Phil (unless they mute the TV). Now no one will listen to him.
 

dcmissle

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Simms is moving to the studio doing The NFL Today.

Art Stapleton‏Verified account @art_stapleton 22s22 seconds ago
Phil Simms is staying with CBS, moving from booth to studio as analyst on The NFL Today
Gumbel went from one to the other, and it's a sensible solution. Phil's a possible backup if Romo crashes and burns, not likely but possible. Phil probably keeps his entire paycheck under his existing contract (Cowher reportedly makes $5 million a year for doing this). After some bruised feelings, they settled it like adults.
 

joe dokes

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Gumbel went from one to the other, and it's a sensible solution. Phil's a possible backup if Romo crashes and burns, not likely but possible. Phil probably keeps his entire paycheck under his existing contract (Cowher reportedly makes $5 million a year for doing this). After some bruised feelings, they settled it like adults.

FIVE MILLION?! Really? Is anyone in charge over there?
 

tims4wins

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If it is true that studio analysts like Cowher make $5M for working 20 days a year, then NFL bubble is definitely going to burst at some point
 

dcmissle

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FIVE MILLION?! Really? Is anyone in charge over there?
That's what I recall reading in some interesting piece about Cowher's nice life when we had one of those conversations about why Cowher, Gruden and Co. are not coming back. But I cannot find that piece now, and it may have been erroneous on the point in any case.

I think it's generally well accepted that Gruden is the highest paid ESPN guy at $6.5 MM per year, but he seems to work more than Cowher.

In any case, my sense is that this was a neat solution for all involved and Simms took no pay cut on his existing contract agreeing to leave the booth.