Jim Nantz is fine.
The 67-year-old sportscaster didn’t actually injure himself demonstrating the so-called “Peanut” punch with CBS broadcast booth partner J.J. Watt — who is 37 and a three-time former NFL defensive player of the year — during the Buffalo Bills-Las Vegas Raiders game on Sunday.
He seems to feel foolish though.
“I learned a lesson,” Nantz said Tuesday on ESPN’s “The Pat McAfee Show.” “You got J.J. Watt cradling the ball like this. What am I — I’m going to like knock it out of his hands? Come on, the thing was vacuum sealed into his chest.”
Named after retired cornerback Charles “Peanut” Tillman, the “Peanut punch” has become an effective method for defensive players to cause fumbles. While showing viewers how offensive players should hold the football to counter the maneuver , Watt encouraged Nantz to “give that a good punch.”
“Really?” Nantz asked.
“Hard as you got, brother,” Watt replied.
So Nantz delivered a solid blow to the ball, which didn’t budge in Watt’s arms.
“I did kind of go aggressively here after this ball because J.J. encouraged me to do so,” Nantz told McAfee while watching a clip of the incident.
Back on the broadcast, Nantz immediately winced and grabbed his hand.
“I did not think you were going to go that hard,” Watt laughed. “That was so much harder than I thought you were going to go.”
Nantz clearly was in discomfort, but he chuckled about it as well.
“My wrist is broken,” he told his booth partner. “Like I’m going to knock it out of your hands.”
“Get Jim some ice,” Watt joked as they were going to commercial.
After halftime, Nantz could be seen in the booth with his hand wrapped. That led some people to believe he had seriously injured himself.
“I heard from people you can’t believe,” Nantz told McAfee. “[Bills quarterback] Josh Allen texted me an hour after the game and said, ‘Did you just break your hand? I hear you broke your hand.’ I heard from a former president of the United States, reached out and wanted to know if my hand was broken.”
McAfee and company speculated that the former president was Barack Obama, but Nantz did not reveal his identity.
After the game, Watt joked on X: “CBS Injury Report Week 7 — Jim Nantz: Questionable (Wrist/Hand).”
The NFL joined in the good-natured fun, posting the clip on Instagram and writing, “the peanut punch isn’t for everybody,” along with a laughing emoji.
While Nantz admitted his hand and wrist “did hurt for a while,” he told McAfee that any reports beyond that were “greatly exaggerated.”
“It did sting, I’m not going to kid you,” Nantz said. “But I gave it my best, and as soon as I did it, I regretted it because I felt like everything had been compressed. And I did think I was going to wake up Monday with this thing about triple the size, but I’m fine. I’m not going to be on the injury report this week. I’m going to be good to go. No broken bones.”
The post Jim Nantz says he ‘learned a lesson’ trying to Peanut punch ball from J.J. Watt: Don’t do it appeared first on Los Angeles Times.
