Texans’ J.J. Watt to Host ‘Saturday Night Live’ Night Before Super Bowl 2020

J.J. Watt will not be playing in the Super Bowl, but he will be part of the action during Super […]

January 22, 2020, 9:47am

J.J. Watt will not be playing in the Super Bowl, but he will be part of the action during Super Bowl weekend. On Tuesday, the Houston Texans announced that Watt will host Saturday Night Live on Feb. 1 which will be the night before Super Bowl LIV. He will be the 27th athlete to host the variety show.

Watt is no stranger to acting on TV or film. In 2016, the three-time Defensive Player of the Year portrayed a youth soccer coach in the film Bad Moms which starred Mila Kunis and Kristen Bell. In the same year, Watt was a football player in the Ang Lee film Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk. He has also appeared in the FX show The League and the Fox show The New Girl.

Videos by PopCulture.com

Along with being the 27th athlete to host Saturday Night Live, Watt is the 11th NFL player to join the club and the first since Eli Manning in 2012. The other NFL players to host Saturday night live are Tom Brady (2007), Alex Karras (1985), Peyton Manning (2007), Joe Montana (1987), Walter Payton (1987), Deion Sanders (1995), O.J. Simpson (1978), Fran Tarkenton (1977) and Carl Weathers (1988).

Watt only played in eight games in the regular season due to a pectoral injury. However, he returned to the playoffs and recorded one sack in two games.

“I think we have a good plan,” Watt said before the playoffs began when talking about his playing time. “I think we have a good plan for how we’re going to utilize the game and how we’re going to go throughout the game. I think today was a good day for me. Today was my first day in pads. We were in pads out there on the field and it was good. I went through a lot of tests that I wanted to go through personally.

“Just mentally, when you’re coming back from — you’ve got to go through some tests mentally to make sure that you can do the things you want to do, and today was a really good day for that. I felt really good out there, did a whole bunch of different stuff to try and simulate what’s going to happen in the game and felt very good in all of those things. So, very pleased with where it’s at.”