In an era with so much “fake news” (and now inconsistent Twitter verification), you’ve got to be like Santa Clause and check every source twice.
JJ Watt retired from the NFL this past season and is looking for some other career paths post-football. He recently announced that he would be “pulling a Ryan Reynolds” with his decision to buy a stake of a European soccer team, which came up while he was on ESPN’s First Take this morning.
Another thing that came up is something that holds no truth whatsoever and caught the 3-time NFL Defensive Player of the Year off guard.
Molly Querim, the show’s moderator, congratulated Watt on his new media venture co-hosting the successful Pat McAfee Show, which hilariously turned out not to be true.
Querim stated:
“You have a lot of exciting new projects, beyond being a new dad. You’ll be the new co-host of The Pat McAfee Show.”
The announcement was shocking and seemed to be surprising to everyone on the show, including Watt. Stephen A. Smith and Chris “Mad Dog” Russo, who co-host the popular ESPN show, were floored by the news and began to applaud and say congrats to the former football player.
Only catch is…Watt has not been announced as the co-host for The Pat McAfee Show, which made for a pretty awkward interaction.
Watt hilariously responds:
“Am I?”
Querim is clearly shaken up by JJ’s response and utters:
“That’s what I was told?”
Watt shakes his head and says:
“Oh, that would be great, (but) no.”
The entire crew of the show begins to laugh the whole thing off, while Watt tries to make sense of the whole misunderstanding. He looks off to the set and asks:
“Pat, did you send me a contract that I’m unaware of? This is great for television.”
Querim admits that she brought the show to a pretty awkward moment, but the thought of Watt teaming up with McAfee isn’t all that bad.
The show’s moderator tries to recover from the mixup and asks Watt if he would consider the co-host gig if it were an actual proposal.
Watt says:
“We can negotiate. There’s a number. There’s a number that can make that happen, I’m open to discussions.
But no, Pat is a great friend, he’s been awesome to me for a long time.”
So it seems that Watt and McAfee aren’t teaming up, and no one is really sure who told Molly to say that.
However, if the two do end up teaming up, we can all credit Querim for breaking the news on First Take, even though it seems like she didn’t.
Watch the hilarious video below:
