RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Credit: CBS Sports
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 was forced to explain 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.
If there’s a silver lining, it’s that Ian Eagle doesn’t really have a type. He’s called games with Dan Fouts, Charles Davis and now Watt at CBS, on top of a rotating cast of NBA and college basketball partners over the years, and he just tends to make whoever’s next to him sound better. Watt basically said as much heading into this past season , giving Eagle the credit for chemistry that helped the two of them crack the top five of Awful Announcing’s 2025 NFL announcer rankings. That flexibility is CBS’s biggest asset here. This isn’t a booth that lives or dies on one specific pairing.
CBS has elected to pair Eagle with Ross Tucker and Evan Washburn, as the two have done many Thursday Night Football broadcasts together on Westwood One 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 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 Sports, which has promoted former Seattle Seahawks and Indianapolis Colts running back Robert Turbin to the sixth broadcast booth, replacing Ross 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.
The post CBS announces Week 1 changes to 2026 NFL broadcast booths appeared first on Awful Announcing .
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