Logan Ryan not worried how potential Tony Romo return could impact his CBS future

Logan Ryan seemed destined for a bigger role from the onslaught of the offseason.

That was because CBS lost two analysts from its No. 4 NFL booth — Jason McCourty and Charles Davis — to ESPN and the network’s college football coverage, respectively. Awful Announcing pinpointed the former New England Patriots defensive back as an internal candidate who stood to gain from those departures, even if it didn’t necessarily mean he’d be the one to join Andrew Catalon.

With CBS primed to promote from within, The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand reported in June that he believed there was “a pretty good chance” the network would tab Ross Tucker to fill the open spot alongside Catalon in the fourth booth. And for a moment, that seemed to be CBS’s thinking, with Ryan likely taking Tucker’s seat in the No. 6 booth alongside Tom McCarthy, which he later confirmed was the case to Awful Announcing.

That was before Tony Romo was arrested in Milwaukee on suspicion of operating a vehicle while intoxicated.

The network swiftly sidelined the former Dallas Cowboys quarterback from its No. 1 NFL booth and, in turn, promoted J.J. Watt, who debuts alongside Jim Nantz and Tracy Wolfson this Sunday. Tucker then slid into Watt’s vacated No. 2 booth alongside Ian Eagle, a domino effect that ultimately gave way to the pairings of Ryan with Catalon and Tom McCarthy with Robert Turbin, with A.J. Ross and Tiffany Blackmon rounding out those crews on the sideline.

Ryan addressed the reshuffling in a recent appearance on the Awful Announcing Podcast, confirming that internal conversations about pairing him full-time with McCarthy were already underway before Romo’s arrest threw a monkey wrench into those plans.

“I don’t think anything was signed, sealed, official, but that looked like that’s what it was going to be,” Ryan told host Brandon Contes. “And then obviously a legal situation happened that I’m not here to speak a lot of, but it changed some things. And they said, ‘Hey, you know, there’s an opportunity here to step up, and we might need you to go and pair with Andrew, if that’s good with you.’

“And opportunities is how careers begin. And my NFL career started with an opportunity with somebody getting injured, and I had a pick-six in that game. And I started a lot of years after that, and the rest is history. So I’m grateful for opportunities. I come from an industry where there was a lot of sudden change, a lot of next-man-ups, a lot of this stuff. So I think my previous career has allowed me to be comfortable in situations when you kind of got to step up.”

While his previous career prepared him for the reality that a player returning from injury could unseat him on the depth chart, it hadn’t necessarily prepared him for the Tony Romo-sized elephant in the room. Romo issued a public statement acknowledging his alcohol issues and signaling his desire to return to CBS, while the network conspicuously declined to comment on his future, lending further credence to the prevailing expectation that Romo’s return is far from likely. In fact, Puck’s John Ourand put the odds at 95 percent that Romo isn’t back with the network.

“That right there is how you get beat deep on a touchdown, man,” Ryan said when asked if he’d spoken to CBS about that five percent scenario playing out. “When you start looking four, five, six, whatever, weeks, months ahead, yeah, you’re not thinking about the present, man. I am so pumped and ready about Week 1 that that’s truly my honest answer. This is where I’m taking this, because this is an opportunity for me to call an awesome game, and I’m excited to call this game. That’s kind of where all my thought and focus has been at.”

It’s perfectly understandable that Ryan gave a roundabout answer, given the great respect he has for Romo, whom he shadowed alongside Jim Nantz for a Patriots-Buccaneers game last November.

“Jim Nantz, man, when he talks, I just want to go into bed and get a bedtime story,” Ryan said. “He’s got the ultimate voice. He would do some team speeches at dinner and kind of speak to the crew, and they were so kind and caring to everybody in their crew. Their crew is like a family. They’ve been together for quite some time. So, I was so honored to be around Jim Nantz and pick his brain on anything.

“And then Tony, Tony’s always shown me a ton of respect when he called my games. He called Super Bowls I was playing in. He called his first-ever game. I don’t know if people remember; his first-ever game that I remember, he called Oakland at Tennessee Titans. And we ran the same red-zone defense four times in a row because that’s just how Dick LeBeau did it, man. Dick LeBeau was old school. We ran the same defense, and Tony Romo predicted all four of those plays. Looked like a genius, and we joke about that.

“But me and Tony love football. We’re moving salt shakers on the table, type of stuff. He’s a quarterback, I’m a DB. So we talk a lot about things and got to learn a lot about his process. And he’s absolutely great at what he does and is a dear friend of mine. So they definitely brought me in and showed me the ropes a little bit. And again, I think some of these experiences, I don’t know if they’re normal. I’m not really sure, but I’m grateful for them, and they, I think, accelerated my growth with the coaching and then the shadowing behind the scenes. I think I was seeing how a lot of people do it and kind of learning my way, what I like, what I don’t like, and how to obviously learn from how the best crew does it.”

Ryan may not want to think about what happens if Romo returns, but there’s a certain irony to the fact that one of the people who helped show him the ropes at CBS could ultimately be the person standing between him and the bigger role he’s now getting to experience.

For now, though, Ryan gets to use what he learned from Romo alongside Catalon. And if the future changes again, he’ll deal with that when it comes.