I don’t hate Joe Buck anymore. I hate Cris Collinsworth. Now he’s the voice I dread the most every Sunday.

What’s worse is he’s always the last voice I hear on football Sundays. You can straight up ignore Buck on Sunday if you watch a different game. You can’t ignore him during TNF, which sucks, but TNF is like a weird side dish of football. SNF gets all the hype and push and after a long day of watching glorious sport, you get stuck with lavish production for one more game that sucks half the time with Collinsworth’s nasal catastrophe whining over it.

And he gets worse every year. He’s still stuck to a bunch of irritating phrases like HERES A GUY and various other cliches. Every genuine insight he has into a player/team gets drowned out in a sea of self-congratulatory reflection or worse, run into the ground. His habit of picking one or two players every game to just not shut up about has gotten even worse. During the Bucs/Pats game earlier this year, He probably said Mac Jones every other sentence and it felt like the Mac Jones association must have been his sponsor for the week because he hyped him up harder than a youtuber paid to endorse Raid Shadow Legends. Mac Jones had a fairly okay game that night. He got lots of completions but also never threw much farther than 5 yards downfield. The level of praise Collinsworth was putting on him was laughable.

A few weeks later, with Russ out after injuring his finger, I could feel that Collinsworth would talk more about Russell Wilson during the Hawks/Steelers game than any other player. I was right! It makes sense to discuss how a team is missing its most vital piece during a broadcast…occasionally, when appropriate. Nah. Every offensive series had shots of Russ on the sideline and Collinsworth bringing him up as if Geno Smith wasn’t playing. A player who isn’t in the game being played shouldn’t be the main topic of a 3 hour broadcast.

He’s horrible about Patrick Mahomes too. Mahomes has had a bad year (for him) and he still got more praise than Josh Allen did, during the game when Josh Allen was kicking his ass. Collinsworth still compares every neat one-handed grab to Odell Beckham even though Beckham hasn’t been relevant for like 4 years. Collinsworth is the only broadcaster I can’t seem to tune out but actively have to mute. Buck, at his worst, was still fairly easy to ignore. Aikman, who still sucks and fumbles for words every play, is still easier to ignore. Mark Schlereth, who might be the dumbest broadcaster, can still largely be tuned out. Collinsworth’s voice is like a kazoo got stuck in a vacuum hose and then said TOM BRADY 60 times in one quarter. Collinsworth sounds like the kid who asked the teacher if they forgot to give out homework became a football broadcaster.

Collinsworth isn’t dumb. He provides some actual great commentary from time to time and I appreciate how he highlights lesser understood or respected aspects of a game, such as line play. But he’s like a subscription box you didn’t sign up for that has one thing you want in a sea of things you don’t and now you have a big pile of trash you don’t know what to do with and trash doesn’t pick up till next Wednesday and nobody else wants the stuff either.

Happy Halloween!