Happy Halloween, readers! The annual horror of Joe Buck makes his triumphant return, just as baseball ends in the most horrifying of results: more Boston smugness.

I have an extremely horrific confession to make.

I don’t hate Joe Buck all that much any more.

He’s not good. He’ll never be good. He’s still too droll, he’s still a robotic shill, and his face is extremely punch-able. But…I don’t know. I’ve grown to accept him. It feels like he’s made a genuine effort to be less robotic and monotone and have some fun in the booth and although some of it comes across as forced, when he actually lightens up I don’t hate him. I am fine with Joe Buck now.

I’ve grown to hate Troy Aikman a lot more. Troy Aikman has gone the way of Phil Simms in that the game is so far past him at this point that his color commentary is useless, so everything he says feels inane and pointless, or it meanders because he doesn’t know what to do. Maybe that is the concussions finally catching up. During the Cardinals/Broncos warcrime the two of them actually started just shooting the shit by the end and Joe came across as very like-able while Aikman sounded like that guy who is trying to figure out what is cool and severely missing the mark. He actually said “Who actually listens to Podcasts?” and even Buck laughed at his stupid ass. Mr. Aikman, as a man with a z-level podcast with like 10 fans, how dare you. Coincidentally here’s a link to the podcast I hope you like it. 

Aikman is trash, I still hate Cris “HERE’S A GUY” Collinsworth, but the kicker has to be the new Monday Night crew. Joe Tessitore is fine, a play by play guy can be dragged down by those around him and this is definitely a case of having no support crew. Jason Witten was not ready for primetime. ESPN clearly thought they’d catch the Romo magic with Witten and it has not worked at all. Witten sounds more out of place every week. Witten constantly identifies plays wrong and has the absolute worst tendency to start a sentence and trail off before completing it. Most of his mistakes feel like rookie problems though, and you can frequently tell that his brain is working faster than his mouth and he is struggling to properly connect the two into coherent commentary. That’s why half his sentences vanish into the void and why he flubs names and such. Given time, Jason Witten might become serviceable. Right now, he belongs on a c-team somewhere till he can find his rhythm.

Booger might be worse. He’s not in the booth but he seems to talk more than either Joe or Jason. Booger never shuts up. He’s got the Collinsworth bad habit of doing “back in my day” career comparisons all the time and most of his ancedotes go nowhere and don’t matter. The Dude talked about how he used to piss his pants on the sideline and when the other two begged him to stop, giving him an easy out of this weird place he’d gone to, he kept going. Now, that’s hilarious as hell, but it is not good commentary. Also his stupid TV cart is dumb. I hope this team flies into the sun.

Give me your announcer opinions! Then give me your Halloween candy opinions! What is the worst Halloween candy? The answer is Whoppers.