Watching the Ravens lose, 25-13, to the Houston Texans was brutal if you are a Baltimore fan. But blame the team, not CBS Sports, for the misery this time. The network delivered a first-rate telecast.
I admit wondering earlier in the season why CBS was going with two analysts on this crew in Steve Tasker and Steve Beuerlein joining play-by-play announcer Andrew Catalon in the booth. And maybe the fact is that they got better as the year wore on. But whatever the case, the trio was smooth, informed, engaged and energized pretty much from beginning to end Sunday.
And the direction was just as good, with quick, crisp replays on the field and focused crowd shots that captured the noise and enthusiasm in the stands.
The coordination between the folks in the production truck and the guys in the booth was as good as it gets in a regional telecast. It culminated in some outstanding close-up images late in the game of defensive lineman J.J. Watt's bloody face between plays. He personally finished the Ravens off with one of the most tremendous individual efforts I have ever seen in an NFL game.
Typically knowing where to go to get the best images, the producers finished the day with their cameras trailing Texans quarterback Case Keenum as he ran along the sideline joyously slapping his teammates in the chest, on the back and anywhere he could make contact with his hands to show his emotion.
Like I said, painful to watch if you are Ravens fan. But it was the right story for CBS to tell.
The producers did get a little lucky. They made Keenum and Watt their pregame focus, and the two turned out to be the offensive and defensive stories of the day, with some help from running back Arian Foster.
Sideline reporter Lewis Johnson put the focus on Keenum with a well-told anecdote about the quarterback being in a deer stand outside St. Louis last weekend hunting when he got a text message from his wife saying there were "some developments" at quarterback in Houston that he should check out. And here he was in a few minutes about to face the usually fierce Ravens pass rush.
"And so, he goes from being the hunter to the hunted," Johnson said in ending his sound bite.
I suspect some will think that line a little too cute, but I appreciate the care Johnson took in crafting it in a way that instantly communicated the topsy-turvy nature of events that led to Keenum starting against the Ravens.
Catalon is superb at setting the table and sharing only those statistics that tell the story of the game.
"For the Ravens, six plays, 5 yards," he said in the first quarter.
All day, he was on the money, offering such statistics without burying the broadcast in a blur of useless ones.
Beuerlein and Tasker have developed a nice rhythm in their analysis – rarely stepping on each other's words. And neither of the former NFL players was afraid to call out athletes on the field or coaches on the sideline.
While he repeatedly said how much respect he has for Joe Flacco, Beuerlein was not shy about saying how wretchedly he thought Flacco performed Sunday. In fact, at one point, he said Flacco had never looked worse to him.
And he didn't simply criticize Flacco, he offered explanations for Flacco's poor performance: the Ravens quarterback was throwing off his back foot, he was throwing across his body, he was rattled by the ferocious charge led by Watt and the blitzes schemed by Houston defensive coordinator Romeo Crennel.
And typical of the way the CBS production went where the game took them rather than totally imposing a narrative on the game, Catalon and the analysts started talking about the third-down "cat and mouse" games going on between Crennel and Ravens offensive coordinator Gary Kubiak, former Houston head coach. They went there, because they felt Crennel was out-coaching Kubiak most of the afternoon.
I know from Twitter that some Baltimore fans were upset with the crew in the booth for agreeing with a call in which Ravens linebacker Daryl Smith was called for a sideline hit on a sliding Keenum. Ravens fans thought it was unavoidable.
After seeing the replay, I agree with the guys in the booth that Smith hit Keenum with his forearm and bent the quarterback's leg – after the initial contact.
Either way, Catalon, Beuerlein and Tasker sided with the Ravens on at least two other controversial calls.
And, you know what? I don't care if they were right or wrong. They delivered their play call and analysis with authority and were generally backed by the replays.
And when someone on their own crew was wrong, they called each out. Beuerlein had barely finished saying how the Texans were going to go conservative on offense, when Keenum took a deep shot over the middle downfield.
"There's your conservative," Catalon said kiddingly.
These guys have definitely grown on me – and into a solid CBS broadcast team.