Super Bowl 3 for Jim Nantz and Tony Romo hopes to be better than their first two

This will be the third Super Bowl for CBS with Jim Nantz and Tom Romo in the booth, but the network is hoping for something more special than the previous two.

The first was Super Bowl LIII, a snooze-fest in which the Patriots beat the Rams, 13-3. The score was 3-3 after three quarters. The game featured 14 total punts.

“Hopefully we don’t have as many punts as the Rams-Patriots game,” Romo said on a video news conference last week. “We were sitting there saying, ‘That was the best punt of the game. That was different than the other punts.’”

When Romo asked sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson whether she remembers that day, she said, “Yes. I don’t want to remember, but I do.”

Nantz added, “I don’t think anyone actually does remember Super Bowl LIII, except for us.”

Then came Super Bowl LV. Tom Brady won again, this time as a Buccaneer, 31-9, over Kansas City on Feb. 7, 2021.

Nantz recalled that because of COVID-19 restrictions, the announcing team did not arrive in Tampa until Thursday or Friday and had no direct interaction with the players and coaches. This year the announcers were set to arrive on Monday.

“We’ll be going to practices and talking to players and coaches on Wednesday,” Nantz said. “I love the process. The process is so much fun, trying to get ready for one of these games. We didn’t have that in Tampa for 55. So in some ways it’s been five years since we did a normal Super Bowl.”

Wolfson recalled standing far from Brady to interview him postgame three years again because of COVID protocols. “It’ll be nice to finally have normalcy again for this Super Bowl,” she said.

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.