Jason Witten’s political takes are almost as bad as his terrible announcing

Nothing typifies our current national moment more than dumb people making everything into a political statement. It’s not a condition endemic to one side or the other, red state or blue state, either.

So it may be possible that Jason Witten was trying to politicize the NFL’s terrible, confusing new roughing the passer rule during Monday’s night broadcast of the Steelers’ 30-27 win over the Buccaneers by casting it as a “left wing” thing.

In case you missed it, here’s what he said.

“They’ve just gone too far with that rule. I knew they wanted to make it about the health and safety, and protecting these quarterbacks. But it just seems like we went a little bit to the left wing on that, you know?”

It sort of fits with throwaway comments about the NFL being “too soft” because NFL Films no longer sells VHS tapes featuring debilitating brain injuries anymore. A comment that’s usually offered up by people angry at player protests they refuse to understand.

For the record, ESPN said that Witten’s comment “had nothing to do with politics.” We have to consider that possibility too ... because Witten is really terrible at his job.

That wasn’t even the only controversial thing he said during Monday’s game. He had takes when the subject of Le’Veon Bell and his ongoing holdout came up. Witten criticized the Steelers running back along with cohost Joe Tessitore until Booger McFarland shut it down.

That wasn’t the only thing Witten said about Bell. At one point he said quarterback Ben Roethlisbeger had issues with Bell’s patience as a receiver, despite the fact Bell caught a career-high 85 passes last season.

Witten stumbles over himself every Monday night.

When Ryan Fitzpatrick overthrew Mike Evans by 15 yards, Witten put the blame squarely on the receiver.

And don’t overlook important insights like this one:

A week ago he was butchering Bears linebacker Danny Trevathan’s name.

Tony Romo earned praise for bringing an approachable, but in-depth level of analysis during his broadcasts. Witten gave us this:

There’s more than enough evidence here for ESPN to cover its butt by punting Witten’s terrible broadcasting skills for the “left wing” remark.

NFL fans got a little spoiled last year. Romo delighted us with his debut in the booth. Jon Gruden was still saying unintelligible, but mostly fun shit for ESPN instead of condemning the Raiders to a perpetual rebuild. And Phil Simms was gone.

The cosmic imbalance could not last. With Simms gone, the universe gave us Jason Witten to fill the void.