The biggest question CBS Sports had to answer at its media days on Tuesday was asked and answered in under three minutes.
After acknowledging the Tony Romo-sized elephant in the room, the network had to answer for the down-ballot impact on the rest of its broadcast booths, with J.J. Watt being promoted to the lead booth alongside Jim Nantz and Tracy Wolfson after the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback was placed on indefinite leave following an OWI arrest.
That promotion solved one problem and created another. Moving Watt up left the No. 2 booth without an analyst opposite Ian Eagle for the first time since Watt himself took the job last summer, and CBS had to fill that seat before it could fill anything else.
The network turned to Ross Tucker, who will join Eagle and Evan Washburn for at least the first two weeks of the season. Tucker and Eagle have called plenty of Thursday Night Football broadcasts for Westwood One, dating back to before “The Bird” departed that role following the 2024 season. Initially, Tucker was seen as having “a pretty good chance” to fill the open spot alongside Andrew Catalon in the fourth booth, but Romo’s arrest seems to have changed that calculus.
Tucker has been a fixture in CBS’s NFL rotation since the 2023 season, regularly working alongside Tom McCarthy as part of the network’s sixth broadcast crew. He also calls college football for CBS and handles radio duties for Westwood One’s Thursday Night Football coverage, rotating with Devin McCourty alongside Kevin Kugler. The Princeton alum and former offensive lineman also hosts the Ross Tucker Football Podcast for DraftKings and calls Philadelphia Eagles preseason games on local television.
As for the Catalon booth, CBS has turned to former New England Patriots and Tennessee Titans defensive back Logan Ryan, who Awful Announcing initially flagged as the most logical internal candidate to step into a booth vacated by both Charles Davis and Jason McCourty. Ryan, who spent last season working CBS games across both the NFL and college football, shadowed Jim Nantz and Tony Romo for an entire week ahead of the Patriots-Buccaneers game in November, sitting in on production meetings and learning how CBS’s top team prepares, before Nantz brought him into the broadcast midway through the fourth quarter. It wasn’t the last we saw of him in an NFL booth.
The rest of the booths remain unchanged, meaning the pairings of Kevin Harlan, Trent Green, and Melanie Collins, as well as Spero Dedes, Adam Archuleta, and Aditi Kinkhabwala, will return for another season together. The only other booth with a notable change is CBS’s sixth crew, where former Seattle Seahawks and Indianapolis Colts running back Robert Turbin has been promoted to replace Tucker, alongside Tom McCarthy and Tiffany Blackmon.
The network also added Luke Kuechly, who was recently tabbed as Netflix’s No. 1 game analyst, in a similar role, while Darius Slay will join as a studio analyst. It’s unknown if the former Philadelphia Eagles and Detroit Lions cornerback will join The NFL Today crew of James Brown, Nate Burleson, Russell Wilson, Bill Cowher, and Kyle Long, or perhaps replace Long on The NFL Today+. Mackenize Brooks, who joined CBS as the lead HQ Analyst of Inside the Lines, will also join the network’s NFL coverage.
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.