Nate Burleson has been lobbying Russell Wilson to join The NFL Today since before it was even an option.
Burleson told TMZ Sports this week that when Wilson joined the show as a guest analyst last December, he spent the entire broadcast lobbying him to choose CBS when the time came.
Wilson officially joined The NFL Today earlier this week after choosing CBS over a contract offer from the New York Jets. He fills the seat vacated by Matt Ryan, who left for the Atlanta Falcons front office. Kyle Long was also elevated to the main set alongside him, joining the returning trio of Burleson, James Brown, and Bill Cowher after years of working his way up through CBS Sports Network, Paramount+, and a postseason stint on the main set last year alongside Kirk Cousins.
“I was surprised because Russell Wilson is a superstar — and in my opinion a Hall of Famer — so a guy like that can work anywhere,” Burleson said. “He can go to Fox, ESPN, any of the streaming platforms, but when he joined us last year for a show, I was whispering to him all show long, like, ‘Bro, hey, if you’re gonna walk away from the game, come to CBS, join us here at Paramount, because we do it the best.'”
“I was recruiting him,” Burleson added. “I was recruiting all the top NFL players to come to CBS.”
Burleson said he isn’t worried about how Wilson will handle the transition, and offered some advice that mirrored the lesson he learned when he first made the jump from the field to the studio.
“Approach this the same way that he approached his career, which is extreme passion, lean in with your heart, be authentically you,” Burleson said. “Something somebody told me when I first got into media: ‘You don’t need to be anybody else.’ I was trying to mimic Ahmad Rashad, Deion Sanders, and Michael Irvin, and I realized they didn’t need another one of those dudes. They need a new Nate Burleson, a fresh Nate Burleson. So just be Russell Wilson, and also show us who Russell Wilson is. Because we get a glimpse of him on the field and a glimpse on social media, but now you really get to peel back the curtain and allow people to fall in love with the man.”
The authenticity question — fair or not — has followed Wilson throughout his career. Awful Announcing noted that, when he made his CBS appearance last December, his reputation for being overly polished and rehearsed would be his biggest obstacle in broadcasting, that nobody wants to hear relentless optimism, and that the studio would only work for him if he was willing to show a side of himself the field had never seen.
“Russell Wilson don’t miss,” Burleson said. “Everything he touches is amazing, from his career to his philanthropic efforts, his marriage, his fatherhood. Everything Russell touches is gold, and this is gonna be the same thing…”
Burleson also left the door open on Wilson’s playing future, just barely.
“I don’t know, I feel like a team could still entice him to play,” the NFL on CBS analyst said. “But hopefully not anytime soon, because I love the fact that he’s on The NFL Today.”
About Sam Neumann
Since the beginning of 2023, Sam has been a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. A 2021 graduate of Temple University, Sam is a Charlotte native, who currently calls Greenville, South Carolina his home. He also has a love/hate relationship with the New York Mets and Jets.