When Eric Ebron strolled into the end zone for the first touchdown of the 2019 Pro Bowl, Monday Night Football color commentator Jason Witten had high praise for the star tight end.
Pro Bowl announcer Jason Witten is still reminding us he’s not a Pro Bowl announcer
Eric Ebron was someone’s guy in 2018, but he certainly wasn’t Patrick Mahomes.
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“Ebron was his guy all year, you know,” Witten told an audience of football junkies desperate enough for a Sunday fix to watch pro sports’ least-important all-star game, referring to AFC starting quarterback Patrick Mahomes in the process. “[Ebron] was so good in the red zone.”
He was half right. Ebron was, in fact, very good in the red zone. He churned out a career-high 13 touchdown catches in 2018 — more than any player in the league except Antonio Brown. Zero of those touchdowns, however, came from Mahomes.
Mahomes plays for the Kansas City Chiefs. Ebron plays for the Indianapolis Colts. And while those teams did meet in the playoffs this winter, that’s about as close as the pairing had ever gotten before Sunday’s Pro Bowl.
Witten corrected himself just before the end of halftime as he and Booger McFarland ran back over the game’s early highlights.
“Mahomes drops it in to Eric Ebron — WHO IS ANDREW LUCK’S GUY — in the red zone.”
Just add it to Witten’s highlight reel
Witten’s first year as an announcer hasn’t lived up to the Hall of Fame career that preceded it. His Monday Night Football calls were inaccurate, uninsightful, and occasionally weirdly political. He’s a maestro of pointing out the obvious:
And the anti-thesis of former quarterback Tony Romo in the booth, adding no analytical value to the broadcast while simultaneously filling the role of “drunk guy at Buffalo Wild Wings desperately trying to bait someone into a conversation at the bar.”
He’s also occasionally just entirely, completely wrong in extremely correctable ways:
The good news is his disinterested analysis is a perfect match for the NFL’s most disinterested game. The bad news is he’s still not sure which star players play for which playoff teams, which seems like something most announcers should know.
Witten wasn’t done, though
To cap it all off — the season and the Pro Bowl itself — Witten went and broke the Pro Bowl trophy.
Maybe it’s time for a vacation, dude.
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