CBS announced Friday that Tony Romo will be on leave until further notice, one week after he was arrested for operating a vehicle while intoxicated.
The network also announced that former Houston Texans defensive lineman J.J. Watt will replace Romo alongside play-by-play announcer Jim Nantz and sideline reporter Tracy Wolfson on CBS’s No. 1 NFL broadcast team.
The fact that CBS included Watt in the announcement suggests it expects Romo’s absence to extend into the regular season.
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The development has naturally raised questions about Romo’s long-term future with the network. But as OutKick has previously analyzed, those questions existed before his arrest.
CBS will televise its next Super Bowl on Feb. 13, 2028, following ESPN’s broadcast this coming season. That game has long felt like the natural deadline for CBS to decide whether Romo remains its lead analyst.
For background, Romo signed a 10-year, $180 million contract in 2020. However, CBS is no longer the same company it was when he re-signed. CBS is now part of David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance.
Ellison, the son of Oracle co-founder Larry Ellison, has already reshaped CBS News since acquiring the company last year. Most notably, he installed Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief. He has made fewer changes on the sports side, though Paramount recently landed UFC rights in a reported seven-year, $7.7 billion deal.
The company paid such a premium for UFC that reports say the NFL wants to negotiate with Ellison before renewing its other television deals, believing he could reset the market with his willingness to overpay.
Put simply, Romo’s contract would preclude most executives from demoting him from the Super Bowl with two years left on his current deal. The Ellisons are different. Larry Ellison is currently the world’s sixth-richest person with an estimated net worth of $203 billion.
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Again, questions about Romo’s future existed before the OWI. Romo has become part of the story for the wrong reasons over the past three seasons. He frequently sounds unprepared, overly goofy and prone to forced banter with Jim Nantz that rarely enhances the broadcast.
The odd catchphrases, strained analogies, random noises and awkward jokes are well below the standard set by the other lead NFL analysts. The gap between Romo and Troy Aikman at ESPN, Tom Brady at Fox and Cris Collinsworth at NBC has become increasingly noticeable.
It’s difficult to imagine someone as ambitious as Ellison wanting Romo to become a distraction during the first Super Bowl under his wing. And given the amount of coverage Romo generates during the season, he would almost certainly be one.
We suspect Ellison would still prefer that Romo show improvement this season and not have to remove the $18-million-a-year analyst from the network’s top broadcast team. In theory, that path still exists. Yet it just became much steeper.
It’s unclear when Romo will return, and now his OWI arrest and the viral video are also part of the story.
There’s also a real possibility that J.J. Watt impresses both viewers and network executives. So far, Watt has shown promise as a color commentator. Put bluntly, he was better at the job than Romo was last season.
If Watt performs well to open the season and Romo returns only to continue struggling, CBS would have a difficult time putting Romo in the analyst chair for Super Bowl LXII next season, a decision that would have to be made before next September.
Think of it like a struggling starting quarterback who gets injured. If the backup plays better, history shows the better player often keeps the job, regardless of the guaranteed contract.
No matter what CBS says publicly in the meantime, Tony Romo’s future is officially in question.
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