Tony Romo's second contract as an NFL TV analyst looks like something a middling NFL quarterback could command.
Romo is due to make $17 million per season in a record-setting new deal with CBS, Andrew Marchand of the New York Post reported Friday night. Sources told Marchand that the contract is for "significantly more than five years" and could be in excess of $100 million in total.
MORE: Frank Caliendo's impression of Romo couldn't be more perfect
CBS spokeswoman Jen Sabatelle confirmed late Friday that the network and Romo had agreed on a new contract, per The Associated Press, but she did not disclose terms.
John Madden held the record for analyst salary at $8 million per year, Marchand reported. Madden secured that amount in the early 2000s, years after becoming a broadcasting superstar.
Romo, who made about $3 million last season, was poised to become a prized television free agent in the spring (Disney/ESPN, which has "Monday Night Football," was rumored to be a potential aggressive suitor), but CBS did what a lot of NFL teams do: extend financially to keep their stars. The former Cowboy QB is very much a star after three seasons as the network's top NFL game analyst working alongside Jim Nantz.
Marchand and the AP noted that CBS had an exclusive negotiating window with Romo before he could test the market.
To put Romo's reported new deal into perspective: The $17 million would put him 17th among the league's current signed quarterbacks in terms of salary cap value for 2020, between Andy Dalton and Drew Brees, according to Spotrac.com. Romo does even better when the comp is average annual value for last season's quarterbacks. By that measure, he would have been 14th, between Philip Rivers and Dalton.
Romo secured an $18 million AAV when he signed a six-year, $108 million contract extension with the Cowboys in 2013. A lot of that Dallas money was later shuffled around through restructuring, but his CBS money is fully guaranteed and not subject to creative cap accounting.
Dak Prescott, you ask? Romo's successor made $2 million in the final year of his rookie contract with Cowboys in 2019. Yes, he will make a lot more than that as an unrestricted free agent in his next contract, whenever that gets done. He should, in theory, make more than Romo, too.
