CBS placed Tony Romo on leave “until further notice” Friday, days after his OWI arrest in Milwaukee and roughly a week after network sources had indicated his job wasn’t in jeopardy.

The network’s plan for replacing Romo with J.J. Watt alongside Jim Nantz and Tracy Wolfson gets CBS through the immediate crisis, but Romo is still owed roughly $72 million over the next four years regardless of how long the leave stretches, and Watt’s promotion leaves the No. 2 booth without an analyst for the first time since he took the job himself last summer.

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.

A handful of names to replace Watt in the No. 2 make some sense, ranging from analysts already calling games to a couple of guys currently parked in the studio. Here they are:

Trent Green

Green’s the most established analyst not already working CBS’s top two booths. He and Kevin Harlan have called games together for six seasons, and that pairing topped AA’s reader poll among every CBS team this year, finishing fourth overall. Still, Green’s spot with Harlan hasn’t stopped CBS from moving him before, and his absence from a Week 18 assignment last season opened the door for Kyle Long’s first booth appearance. Pulling Green up to Eagle would leave Harlan scrambling for a new partner, but CBS has shown it’s willing to make that kind of trade.

Kyle Long

Long has actual game-booth experience, having called Chiefs-Raiders in Week 18 before this offseason’s promotion to the main NFL Today set alongside Russell Wilson. That promotion is what complicates things. Long isn’t just a spare part CBS can shuffle around anymore, and swapping in someone like Antonio Pierce to backfill the studio desk would be a lot simpler than yanking Long out of it and leaving CBS shorthanded in two places at once.

Adam Archuleta

Archuleta is already calling games for CBS, working alongside Spero Dedes on the network’s fifth broadcast team. That booth finished 17th in AA’s 2025 NFL announcer rankings, well behind Eagle and Watt’s pairing, which makes Archuleta a less obvious upgrade than some of the other names here. Moving him would also strand Dedes without a partner, the same domino effect that comes with pulling Green off Harlan’s booth.

Ross Tucker

Tucker is CBS’s go-to answer whenever this exact kind of vacancy opens up. He’s worked alongside Tom McCarthy on the network’s sixth broadcast team since 2023, and when CBS needed to fill a different opening in Andrew Catalon’s booth, The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand pegged him as the top internal candidate for that job too, pointing to his dual NFL/college football workload and his Westwood One radio gig on Thursday Night Football. When CBS wants someone who already knows the building, Tucker’s name comes up first for a reason.

Logan Ryan

Ryan was mentioned in that same piece as another realistic option, and his resume has been building toward a bigger role for a while. He shadowed Nantz and Romo for a full week ahead of a Patriots-Buccaneers broadcast last November, an experience CBS doesn’t typically offer to analysts it isn’t grooming, and he’s worked both NFL and college football games for the network since retiring.

Nate Burleson

Burleson already has direct experience with this exact pairing. He called Netflix’s Christmas Day game last season alongside Eagle and Matt Ryan, giving him a real sample of what working with Eagle specifically looks like. Burleson is currently entrenched at NFL Today, though, and CBS has generally kept its studio voices separate from its game booths this season, which makes him a plausible name more than a likely one.

Russell Wilson

Wilson is the true wild card here. He walked away from an offer from the Jets this offseason to join NFL Today instead, which gives CBS a recently active starting quarterback with obvious analyst upside, but he hasn’t called a single broadcast yet. Fast-tracking him into a game booth would be a bold bet on someone still figuring out television, though CBS has made bolder bets on big names before.

Charles Davis

Davis is still one of the more respected voices in CBS’s stable, but he’s simply not available in the way he used to be. He’s already moved on to succeed Gary Danielson, working the network’s lead Big Ten package with Brad Nessler and Jenny Dell, and CBS just spent the better part of a year building that pairing out. Pulling him back into an NFL booth now would mean undoing a transition the network only just finished. He’s a name worth mentioning because of his tangible history with Ian Eagle, but he’s not an actual possibility.

CBS hasn’t tipped its hand, and given how much it’s already reshuffled its booths over the past year, whoever gets this job might not even be the long-term answer. But for now, with no word on how long Romo will be sidelined, the easiest fix might just be a chain reaction rather than an outside hire. Green moves up to Eagle. Tucker slides into Green’s old seat with Harlan. Ryan steps into Catalon’s booth to fill the hole left by Charles Davis and Jason McCourty’s exits. Three internal guys each move up a rung; nobody has to come from outside the building, and that’s assuming CBS isn’t already treating Romo’s leave as something more permanent.