The Jim Nantz-J.J. Watt era atop the NFL on CBS’s broadcast booth hierarchy is underway, though not in the way the network, Nantz, or Watt himself would’ve scripted it.
As the former Houston Texans All-Pro told Awful Announcing and The Dan Patrick Show, he’s under no illusions about how he got here, given that Tony Romo’s arrest for operating a vehicle under the influence — and his subsequent sidelining — have paved the way for the 37-year-old. But he’s not treating that as an asterisk, even if he’s careful not to sound like he’s celebrating the circumstances that left opened the door for him.
Still, Watt sounded genuinely energized heading into his second season in the booth, and the abbreviated runway hasn’t slowed him down, either. While Nantz and Watt won’t call a preseason game together for network, the two have already begun logging reps behind the scenes, including a mock broadcast trial run built to simulate the pressure they’ll face come Week 1 in Minnesota.
“It’s been really good,” Watt told AA regarding his early impressions of his new partner. “We’ve obviously talked a lot. We’ve both talked on the phone, lots of text messages. We did a mock game yesterday where we called a game from last year together, and that went really well, so everything has been going really well so far.
“He is a very, very talented communicator,” Nantz added, as he offered his own read on what makes his new partner tick. “When you win the Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, and you win the Sports Illustrated Sportsman of the Year Award, which impresses me way more than anything he’s done in his legendary first-ballot Hall of Fame football career, that tells you that the man knows about leadership and he knows how to not only lead people, he knows how to deliver a message. This is something that comes naturally for him. Look at who he is, look at all that football stuff, just look at what he’s been recognized for off the field and the ability to put a headset on and break down a football play compared to being in the community and helping people during a crisis in your city and rolling up your sleeves and doing things and leading people to help make Houston better, maybe this is something that comes naturally for him. He can do that.”
If those qualities truly come as naturally to Watt as Nantz suggested, it hasn’t spared him from refining his craft. And during his appearance on The Dan Patrick Show, Watt was asked whether his preparation for the upcoming season has shifted given the scant notice he’s had to get ready.
“Not from a preparation standpoint any more than from year to one to year two,” he told the former SportsCenter anchor. I already would prepare differently and some of the things that I want to continue to work on and improve on. But it’s just building chemistry, building our cohesiveness, and becoming that that tight-knit group that we want to be. I mean, Jim and I did a practice game together two days ago. It went really well. Had a good time in and working out all that stuff. So, just nothing more than trying to be as comfortable as possible on air.”
How do you do a practice game?
“So, what we did is really cool,” Watt explained, “CBS, we have this full basically mock booth set up where there’s just a giant screen in front of you with the game playing. We have our headsets on. We have all of our, you know, talkback buttons and everything. Producer in our ear and they roll a game from last year and we call it as if we’re seeing it for the first time.”
They have a full mock booth at the CBS Broadcast Center, with a giant screen in front of the announcers, headsets, talkback buttons and a producer in their ears. The network can roll a game from the previous season, giving the announcers a chance to call the action as if they’re seeing it live, without the benefit of knowing what’s coming next. For Nantz and Watt, that meant pulling up the Bills-Chiefs game from last season and running through roughly five segments of the broadcast.
Nantz kept his spotting board from the originial broadcast in front of him, but the point of the exercise wasn’t to recreate the call — which ironically included Romo making weird noises — but it served as a test run for how their voices can sit next to one another in the booth.
“Well, we just had one little brief time yesterday at the CBS Broadcast Center, going through about five segments of a game that I called last year in Buffalo, Kansas City, Buffalo, and it had nothing to do with content,” Nantz told AA. “It had everything to do with chemistry and just putting the headset on and blending our voices. And it was easy. We did a very good job, and it’s kind of one of those nuanced parts of the business that you don’t know quite how to describe it… It’s a feel thing. I just want to see what it felt like hearing him in my headset and just feeling like, when he’s gone, now I’m gonna go into this play call on his back. What does that feel like? What’s that yin and yang? What is that like?
“And really, truly, we never stepped on each other once. It just felt like it was conversational. That’s what you aspire for, is to have something that is a blend in the storytelling. Not that we’re in-depth storytelling. He wasn’t at those production meetings for that game. I was, and it wasn’t an opportunity for us to dig into, well, Andy Reid told us yesterday, because he wasn’t in that meeting.I actually had my spotting board from that game, but that was a good start. And again, a good start to how many games and weeks, I can’t tell you. That’s something that David will let us know.”
Nantz, of course, was referring to CBS Sports president David Berson, who has stayed deliberately vague about how long Romo’s absence actually lasts. At the network’s NFL media day earlier this week, Berson called it “an evolving situation” with “no timeline for a final decision at this time,” while making a point that CBS “had to consider the impact on our image and our our brand.”
For now, at least, Nantz and Watt have established that the basic chemistry is there. What CBS still had to figure out is how long it actually needs it to be.
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