NEW YORK — First Houston, then Arizona and now, J.J. Watt's new team is CBS.
It’s a whole new ball game now for JJ Watt. On Sunday morning at 11 a.m., it’s his first broadcast as the new member of The NFL Today, airing on KHOU 11.
"TV analyst - this was not a dream of yours, was it?" Bristol asked.
"Um, no, no, I always said I wasn't going to do it," Watt replied. "And then, 10, 12 years later, reality hits you and you realize, 'Oh yeah, I really, really love the NFL and I don't want to be away from it."
He will always be number 99, but walking the halls of the CBS broadcast center, Watt is wearing a new label. A quarterback sack master is now rookie broadcaster.
“Great players don't necessarily make great broadcasters. What are you doing to make sure that you become a great broadcaster?” we asked him.
“There’s no guarantees, that’s for sure,” he said. “I study film. I watch the games. I watch all the shows and you just try and be as prepared as you can be. But then when it comes down to it, you just have to be yourself.”
"He's a little stiff, we got to break him," analyst and former quarterback Boomer Esiason joked. “He’s like, just dipping his toe into it, and the fact he was one of the most popular players when he played, he knows exactly what’s going on."
Watch the full interview between Jason Bristol and JJ Watt in the video below:
Sundays will now look and feel very different for Watt, though there's far fewer strains and pains in this line of work.
How’s he prepared for his new gig? What does he bring to the CBS team? Will it be hard for him to criticize players he knows personally? Watt will answer those questions this weekend on KHOU 11 News.
"Why CBS," Bristol asked Watt.
"They've been great the whole time. I mean, I've been very fortunate," he replied. "They've been awesome and they've been very understanding of my schedule. I really wanted to make sure that in my first year of retirement especially, I was spending as much time with my family as I could. So that's why I'm not going to be full-time this fall."
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Watt is part owner of Burnley FC in the English Premier League and loves to talk about THAT kind of football.
"I want to spend time with my wife and my son, obviously our football club over in England, and really just I want to have Christmas and Thanksgiving," he said.