Tony Romo’s leave from CBS Sports isn’t ending after one week.
CBS announced its broadcast assignments for Weeks 2 and 3 of the 2026 NFL season on Monday, and J.J. Watt, who proved plenty competent in his debut, will remain in the lead booth alongside Jim Nantz and Tracy Wolfson for both weeks, calling Steelers-Patriots in Week 2 before the crew heads to Brazil for Ravens-Cowboys.
Romo was arrested in Milwaukee on July 23 on suspicion of operating a vehicle while under the influence, and CBS placed him on leave “until further notice” that Friday, July 31, with the network noting at the time that Watt would join Nantz and Wolfson in the top booth as part of the same announcement.
He posted a statement to Instagram on Sept. 1 saying he had pleaded no contest to a civil offense and had been dealing with alcohol issues tied to weaning off pain medication from his playing career, adding that he still hoped to return to CBS. The network didn’t respond to the statement at all, which Awful Announcing’s Sean Keeley noted was itself a kind of answer, given how much of the industry already assumed Romo’s run at CBS was a foregone conclusion.
After years of regression as a game analyst, the situation is a natural way for the network to part ways with Romo. The only impediment to a clean split is Romo’s lucrative contract, which has four years and about $72 million remaining.
Romo’s reps told TMZ he was taking “proactive steps” to resolve his legal situation swiftly. But judging by the network’s decisions and the comments of its own talent, nobody inside CBS appears to be holding their collective breath, let alone planning around a scenario where Romo actually reclaims his old seat.
“That right there is how you get bet deep on a touchdown, man,” Logan Ryan told AA when asked whether he’d thought about what a Romo return might mean for his own role down the line. “When you start looking four, five, six, whatever, weeks, months ahead, yeah, you’re not thinking about the present, man.”
CBS, for its part, is not thinking past Week 3.
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.