Gary Neville, Ian Wright and Jamie Carragher left stunned as JJ Watt details cut-throat nature of NFL

The NFL is a brutal place, as Gary Neville, Jamie Carragher and Ian Wright discovered.

The former Premier League players, along with Roy Keane and Jill Scott, spoke to JJ Watt, who is now a minority investor in Burnley and spent 12 seasons in the NFL before calling time on his career in 2022.

Appearing on the Stick to Football podcast, Watt discussed Louis Rees-Zammit’s decision to leave rugby union and begin a career in American football.

The former Wales international has linked up with Super Bowl-winning Kansas City Chiefs, but Watt explained that doesn’t mean he’s already made it.

He said: “I don’t think it’s a slam dunk like, ‘Yeah, he’s absolutely going to do it,’ at least from what I know. I know a little bit more, but he has a chance.”

Watt then said the players wouldn’t care about his background because they only had one thing on their minds in preseason.

“The NFL is such a cutthroat business.

“I don’t think anyone would think about it (where Rees-Zammit comes from), because there are only 53 places and you start the list with 90.

“So that means you’re eliminating all these guys to get down, so you don’t care.”

This surprised the room so much that they checked to see if teams did this every year.

3

3

Watt continued: “Yeah. Every year, every team’s roster starts at 90 at the start of training camp, and then by opening day you have to get to 53.”

While Neville was stunned by “37 people being bombed every year”, Carragher posed the question of what happened to those who were not guarded. »

In a one-word response, Watt simply said, “House.”

This left the panel bursting into laughter at the brutality of the sport, with Watt explaining the harsh reality.

“You get paid for a few weeks in training camp, but you go home. Most guys say, ‘Oh, that’s the dream.’

“And a lot of people will say, ‘I played in the NFL for a cup of coffee,’ because they came to training camp and got cut, and they never actually played in a real game of the NFL.

“That’s another big difference between the Premier League and the NFL, at any point in the season you can be knocked out, like in week seven of the season you can be knocked out and finished.

“And you can also be picked up next week by the same team or a different team, here (in England) you are in the same team until the transfer window.”