Dan Patrick advises J.J. Watt to avoid social media this NFL season

As J.J. Watt prepares to replace Tony Romo in the lead NFL booth for CBS, Dan Patrick is warning about the added attention he’s about to receive.

Watt’s first season in the booth for CBS was a success as the former NFL linebacker received rave reviews working with Ian Eagle. But the pressure will undoubtedly be different when Watt joins Jim Nantz and Tracy Wolfson in CBS’s top booth this year. Watt was promoted while Tony Romo’s future with CBS remains unclear in the wake of his recent OWI arrest in Milwaukee.

Wednesday morning, Watt joined The Dan Patrick Show to preview the upcoming NFL season and his new role for CBS.

“A lot more eyeballs,” Patrick noted. “A lot more social media there, J.J. coming your way. Do you follow social media?”

And when Watt admitted he does read the comments on social media, Patrick suggested he might want to stop doing so this season, where he’s about to receive more attention as a lead analyst.

“You got to understand what it is,” Watt responded. “You have to know that no matter what, you could call the perfect game and have the best game ever and there is going to be somebody that hates the sound of your voice, that hates the fact that their team lost, that hates that you analyze the game the way that you saw it, that hates the color of your tie, that hates the color of your eyes, that hates the way your teeth look. They’re going to hate something.

“My wife and I talk about it all the time; she’s like, ‘I don’t know how you look.’ I look at it because I can filter. I have a brain, and I’m filtering out what’s real and what’s not. Because I do think there are very beneficial things that people say and there are things that you should be monitoring to see how the audience feels about you.”

Watt’s predecessor Tony Romo probably enjoyed reading social media in 2017, back when nearly every NFL fan and media analyst raved about his enthusiasm and ability to predict plays at the line of scrimmage. But if Romo read social media in recent seasons, he would have seen mounting criticism. Even Romo fans would agree there has been some level of regression for him as an analyst in recent years, but the snowball effect turned social media into a forum to rip the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback every Sunday.

Patrick is right. The attention on Watt is about to be turned up this year as a lead analyst for CBS, which Romo can probably attest to. If Watt can decipher what criticism is real and constructive versus what is disingenuous, social media might still serve a purpose. But he’s going to need to have a really great filter.