There’s been more and more call over the last few seasons to replace Gil Santos and Gino Cappelletti in the booth calling games every week on the Patriots Rock Radio Network. While both, especially Santos, were at one time fine announcers they are like watching an aging pitcher who doesn’t have his fastball anymore. Listening to G&G on a fall Sunday afternoon in New England used to be a treat now it’s more like watching Mike Timlin pitch. You love them for all they’ve brought to you but there are more and more signs that the game has passed them by.
They simply don’t have it any longer. They miss plays, miss identify players, down and distance, yard markers and if it came down to it I don’t think either Santos or Cappelletti could identify Pat Patriot. To me the glaring error was last year in Week 17 against the Giants when Brady threw a record setting TD pass to Randy Moss on the bomb. It was Brady’s 50th TD pass, Moss’ 23rd TD catch, both NFL records, and the G&G boys didn’t know who the receiver was until way after the celebration had started. There aren’t many players in the entire NFL who look and play like Moss and that should have been an easy ID.
But I’m not here to bash Santos and Cappelletti, really I’m not, it would be like bashing Timlin I can’t do it. But it is high time that the Kraft family looks at some replacements for both of them in the booth for the 2009 season.
So if you had your choices who would you put in there. To replace Cappelletti as an analyst you can go a few different ways and I hope to God that one of those ways is never, ever named Fred Smerlas, Andy Gresh or Steve DeOssie. Some of more sane choices amongst former Patriots players might be Scott Zolak, Tim Fox, recently retired Troy Brown, Hall of Famer Andre Tippett, Steve Nelson, Craig James or local hero Doug Flutie.
My choice would be Zolak, he is articulate, put together, knows the game, the players and would be a good fit. According to things I have heard the Kraft family thinks very highly of him and his abilities.
Choices for a new play-by-play person to replace Santos are probably more complicated. But as long as Dale Arnold and Jon Meterparel stay well away from the booth I can live with it. Some of the choices here might include WCVB’s Mike Lynch who already does the sideline reports for the preseason games on TV and does the Patriots All-Access broadcasts. I also think former Red Sox announcer and current ESPN football/basketball guy Sean McDonough would be a good choice as well as ESPN’s Joe Tessitore and Brad Nessler. Grabbing an announcer from another NFL team would be possibility three guys who I think do a good job are Josh Lewin in San Diego (he also calls Texas Rangers baseball games), Dave Pasch in Arizona and Bob Wischusen (Boston College grad) from the Jets.
But if I had to pick I’d go with McDonough. To me he is just too good, too local and too logical a choice to at least make a run at.
And it’s not as if McDonough couldn’t still do the college games for ESPN as many of the NFL radio guys also work college games. In fact Pasch and Wischusen do it as well as other NFL announcers like Dave Lapham and Wayne Larrivee.
So if you had a new Patriots Rock Radio Network dream team who would be your two guys? Feel free to add suggestions to the names in the comments.
