Hoffarth: How soon before CBS captures Maing as its NFL analyst?

There’s a not-so-peculiar rumor percolating in NFL TV business circles that as soon as Peyton Maing says he’s retiring from the game – which could have happened by now – CBS will have a contract ready to go for him to sign up as its A-team game analyst, the new partner for Jim Nantz.

Which would mean Phil Simms could retire as well.

Imagine that.

That may be the logical circle-of-life conclusion to the network’s otherwise uneven Super Bowl 50 coverage Sunday of Denver’s equally sloggish 24-10 win over Carolina in Santa Clara.

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Those consistently consumed with criticism of Simms had plenty of material to throw against the wall as he plodded through his eighth Super Bowl TV analyst appearance. Typically choppy, twangy, contradictory … a dot-dot-dot string of thoughts and half-thoughts … often ending with that awkward silence where he clearly hopes Nantz picks up the conversion and tries to end the paragraph.

Simms had his moments of OK-ness, his flashes of the obvious.

But if the game-tuing moment was of any indicator, here’s what transpired on Cam Newton’s fumble with 4:04 to play and the Broncos hanging onto a six-point lead:

“Here it comes, No. 58 Von Miller (as the wide endzone replay beings, the yellow arrow appears) against (Carolina right tackle) Mike Remmers one more time …

“Cam Newton didn’t feel it, didn’t step up. The football just taken out of his hand.”

Actually, it was batted down. More silence. Simms then noted that Newton did not attempt to go after the loose ball on the ground.

Nantz interjected: “He jumped away from it … instead of (going) into the pile!”

Simms: “Yup. He made the decision it wasn’t worth going in there to get it. Shoulda dove in. Had a chance to recover it.”

There was Simms’ moment to be assertive and relevant, but he was more hesitant, even in watching it as a replay, as if he again didn’t trust his view of the play.

In some moments of clarity, Simms could sound like Cris Collinsworth or even Troy Aikman. But otherwise, he was just trying to get through it.

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Said Simms coming out of halftime: “We were thinking the first team to 24 wins the game, that’s what our thought was before, but we should lower that some after that first half.”

Tus out, first to 24 did win. Don’t overthink it.

Simms had promised all week to let his thoughts be known of what he believed to be Maing’s future. Nantz finally asked Simms about it after the final two-minute waing: Is this it for Peyton?

“It’s gotta be; how could it end any better than this?” said Simms.

At that point, we had a flashback to Simms, much earlier in the day during the pregame shows, where Geico hired him to be in a commercial spot where he sat at an electric organ and pretended to play the rock ballad, “The Final Countdown.”

For pretty much everyone conceed?

A one-and-done ruling

Midway through the first quarter, a play on the field was ruled a dropped ball by Carolina receiver Jerricho Cotchery, an incomplete pass. Carolina challenged the call.

After a commercial, CBS brought in rules analyst Mike Carey, who Nantz qualified as the being the referee for Super Bowl XLII.

“What did you see?” Nantz asked Carey.

“I think it’s a good challenge by Carolina. The receiver goes up. He’s going to the ground so he must maintain control of the ball, which he does. If I was in the booth I would reverse this to a catch. … The ball never hits the ground even though there’s a bobble inside. Maintains good control. Up off the ground. He rolls over, keeps it off the ground.”

The play stood as called as incomplete.

Both Nantz and Simms seemed to be as confused as Carey, who was never heard from again. Carey’s opinion conflicted with the play on the field, even if it appeared he was correct.

For another Carolina challenge in the second quarter, CBS didn’t bring Carey in for a rules discussion about whether Maing was down on contact, negating an incomplete pass.

“This is going to be an easy overtu here,” said Nantz.

It was. And Carey got the rest of the night off.

Counter programming

With nine minutes to play, Nantz noted that Denver’s 16-10 lead was built on 14 penalties, five sacks, five tuovers and one offensive touchdown to that point, which was a simple 1-yard leap.

As if on cue, social media began to alert Southe Califoia viewers that KNBC-Chael 4 was in full coverage of a live Califoia Highway Patrol freeway chase involving someone identified as fleeing from a possible road-rage incident.

Who would go with the spike strip first, Maing or the CHP?

Tus out, KNBC had to opt out of the chase when its local news show ended at 7 p.m. and went to a network program.

By coincidence at about that time, CBS, which had aired some Toyota Pruis commercials during the game with a police-chase theme, had a beer spot with actress Helen Mirren condemning anyone who considered driving while drunk: “They are a short-sighted, utterly useless oxygen-wasting human form of pollution, a Darwin-award wiing selfish coward.”

Things that work or need more work

• Having Denver’s DeMarcus Ware hooked with a microphone came in clutch for a CBS replay of the moment in the first quarter when Denver recovered a Newton fumble and scored its first touchdown.

• These “Next Gen Stats” were mostly to impress us with what we could find out about the speed of players. One showed that Newton’s max ruing speed this season was 20.3 miles per hour, better than any of Denver’s defenders.

The only thing was that Simms tried to find 10 different ways to say that the Denver pass rush was “so fast” was it was the reason Newton had constant trouble.

• Audio issues seemed to plague the CBS broadcast, whether it kept fading in and out, loud to soft, and occasionally picking a producer counting out into a commercial break. That, and the constant “woooo” of a fan (or a wailing dog) in the background that wouldn’t go away.

• CBS continued to laud its EyeVision360 swing-around camera, as well as its overhead camera, but that’s pretty standard equipment on any NFL telecast these days. The one strange appearance by the EyeVision360 came on Denver’s fourth-quarter touchdown, where, by the replay, looked as if ruing back C.J. Anderson had to dive through a waterfall to get into the end zone.

• CBS brought on NFL commissioner Roger Goodell for a pregame interview with James Brown that evolved into the usual obfuscation, despite Brown asking the pertinent questions about Maing’s HGH investigation, concussions and other issues. It ended with Goodell tapping Brown on the knee to remind him how the NFL-CBS partnership had been working so well.

Brown had a much more entertaining experience with a taped interview he did for the four-hour show on more race-related topics with Newton.

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