NEW YORK – In more ways than one, the historic philanthropic effort led by JJ Watt to help rebuild the greater Houston area in the wake of Hurricane Harvey paved the way for him to join the No. 1 announcing team for the NFL on CBS.
For one, the publicity – Watt’s foundation raised more than $40 million in one year after the 2017 storm while he starred as a defensive end for the Houston Texans – landed him on the radar of CBS Sports executives.
Secondly, the charitable community in Houston embraced Watt, who became a regular on the philanthropic scene – a setting familiar to Jim Nantz, the longtime CBS broadcaster and University of Houston alum.
The shared history will prove useful when Watt and Nantz are paired together with the top NFL broadcast
crew for CBS to begin the 2026 season, starting with the Minnesota Vikings and Green Bay Packers’ Week 1 tilt. Watt steps into the shoes of Tony Romo, the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback who has been CBS’ top analyst since 2018. Romo was arrested July 23 in his native Wisconsin and ultimately pleaded no contest to three charges stemming from operating a vehicle while intoxicated (OWI) incident and has been on leave from CBS since July 31. In a recent statement, he said he is working with a team of doctors while addressing his health and does not know how long he will be absent from the booth.
There is no timetable for Romo’s return. Until then, Watt – who has one season of experience in a broadcast booth – occupies one of the most-coveted seats in sports broadcasting.
“It’s not the circumstances you want something like this to happen under,” Watt told USA TODAY Sports in August. “But at the same time, it’s an opportunity for me to work with this incredible lead crew and to call Packers-Vikings and have an opportunity to be on the best crew and the best games.”
Watt’s fundraising efforts in the aftermath of Harvey put him on the radar of David Berson, who eventually became CBS Sports president and was integral in Watt joining the network. And Nantz has always admired his new partner both on and off the field.
“He’s got a gift for communicating,” Nantz told USA TODAY Sports, “it’s obvious.”
That much was true for NFL fans who enjoyed games called by Watt and Ian Eagle in the network’s No. 2 booth last season.
“I think when you do this job and you have immediate rapport with someone, you’re excited about the games, about the weekends, about hanging out, about the production meetings,” Eagle told USA TODAY Sports. “So, believe it or not, I’ll miss that time more than the game itself.”
Nantz said his job is to make Watt as comfortable as possible while he wears the interim tag. Berson considered the strength of the Eagle-Watt pairing, combined with the spotlight a No. 1 broadcast assumes thanks to its quality of game assignments, before deciding Watt was ready for the jump.
Whether making Watt the No. 1 analyst on a temporary basis would stunt his development as a broadcaster, given his relative inexperience, was something Berson considered.
“When this opportunity came up, we had a conversation to see if it would be the right fit – understanding we don’t know the duration,” Berson said.
Ultimately, CBS determined Watt – always down to help the team – was up for the challenge.
“JJ is a competitor and he’s a team guy, first and foremost,” Berson said.
Nantz and Watt met for two days in New York last month and called a practice game together (the 2025 Buffalo Bills vs. Kansas City Chiefs Week 9 game).
Asked for his impression of the feedback received from bosses, Watt held back a grin and replied: “It was good.”
The call came off with ease, Nantz said. He watched Watt’s games from last season and immediately noticed that the former sack king does not have tunnel vision on the trenches.
“He sees the whole field,” Nantz said.
JJ Watt brings unique perspective to No. 1 NFL booth
NFL on CBS lead producer Jim Rikhoff said having a defensive player in the booth adds a different dimension to the broadcast. The No. 1 analysts at FOX and ESPN are both quarterbacks, and Romo is also an ex-signal-caller.
“A little representation,” as Watt, who also played tight end at the beginning of his college career, put it.
“The whole goal for a broadcast, in my personal opinion, is for it to feel like you’re sitting on a couch with your buddies watching a game,” Watt said
Rikhoff is not surprised by Watt’s rapid broadcasting rise because he can sense the focus with which three-time Defensive Player of the Year approaches the craft.
“He asks the right questions. Anytime I’m with him, he’s one step ahead of what we’re doing," Rikhoff said.
Watt also embraces the television production angle of the job, Rikhoff said. Director Mike Arnold and replay coordinators have made tweaks and will have to learn Watt’s preferences to lean into his strengths.
“OK, this is why it happened, but now, here’s how they’re going to evolve, here’s how they’re going to attack it,” Watt said of his main focus when calling games.
But the 2017 Walter Payton Man of the Year wants to be better at explaining the league-wide trends affecting the specifics of the game – all in 15 seconds.
“In a way that my grandma who’s also watching the game can also understand what a two-shell coverage is,” he said.
From pitch meeting to No. 1 booth: How JJ Watt rose ranks at CBS
Upon his retirement as a player following the 2022 season, Watt met with all of the NFL’s media partners about a prospective job.
He wasn’t convinced that entering the business was the best idea, but a conversation on a golf course with Charles Barkley, the NBA great whose second career as an analyst on “Inside the NBA” made him one of the most successful media members of a generation, stuck with him. The flexibility the show afforded him during the offseason and the consistency in-season was ideal, Barkley said.
“It was one of those things where you were like ‘Yeah, how cool is that?’” Watt said.
Berson and lieutenant Ross Molloy, senior vice president for talent, visited him in Arizona to pitch CBS and see if the Wisconsin native was a fit. The two sides hit it off, in Berson’s telling.
Something about the conversation, Watt said, and the way Berson and Molloy handled themselves and the vision they pitched – “Because they knew I wasn’t sold on this industry,” he said – swayed him. One positive for CBS was the hybrid model of working in the studio once every three weeks to start, which signaled a willingness to accommodate his desire to stay home with his wife and two young sons.
“Now it’s pretty unbelievable to see where it is today,” Watt said of his role.
He added: “When I retired, I knew I didn’t know what it was going to look like. That’s why I set it up the way I did – to keep options open in the event that it worked out one way or another.”
Watt knew he’d love the job or hate it. The answer being the former is clear.
“He understands the medium of television. He understands the medium of social media. He’s very well-regarded,” Berson said.
Watt was a full-time member of “The NFL Today” cast for two seasons before moving to the booth in 2025. He said he loved the game-day atmosphere too much to be cooped up in an air-conditioned studio.
“To talk about it over the course of three hours,” he said, “is so much fun.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'He's got a gift': JJ Watt's CBS rise continues with Tony Romo on leave
