J.J. Watt says NFL teams have been guarded with him

Tom Brady might not be the only NFL legend-turned-broadcaster who has a tough time getting teams to open up to him. Appearing on Wednesday’s episode of The Pat McAfee Show, J.J. Watt revealed that he’s faced his own challenges getting information out of teams who are seemingly fearful of his personal ties to other teams.

“I’ve faced it myself,” the CBS analyst said. “This week, I’m calling the Steelers-Patriots. Week 1, I called the Jets-Steelers. I think that there might be a little more guardedness there knowing that my brother’s on the team. Not that I’m going to tell him anything, not that I’m going to give away anything. But different weeks and different teams are definitely giving you different information depending on what’s there.”

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Watt’s brother, of course, is Steeler Pro Bowl pass-rusher T.J. Watt. And coincidentally (or not), three of the first four games that J.J. has broadcast have featured Pittsburgh, dating back to his call of last season’s Christmas Day game for Netflix.

But whatever conflict of interest might exist for J.J. Watt seemingly pales in comparison to the current controversy surrounding Tom Brady. During ESPN’s broadcast of the Monday Night Football matchup between the Los Angeles Chargers and Las Vegas Raiders earlier this week, the 7-time Super Bowl champion was seen sitting in the Las Vegas coaches’ box wearing a headset, reigniting the conversation regarding his perceived conflict of interest as both Fox’s lead analyst and a Raiders’ minority owner.

While the NFL has enacted (and relaxed) some restrictions regarding Brady’s access as an analyst, most seem to agree that the onus has now been placed on the teams he covers to protect their information. As for how useful such pre-production meetings even are, that seems to vary by both the broadcaster and the team. But based on his own experience thus far, Watt is of the opinion that they are ultimately overrated — especially if you happen to have a brother on the opposing team.

“People think that you have all this inside access, which they’ve kind of stripped most of it away,” he said. “The one thing he is able to do is attend Zoom production meetings. So then you think, ‘OK, well, he has inside information from these Zoom production meetings.’ The truth of the matter is, the team can choose to give you as much or as little information as they want to give you in those meetings.”

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