Saturday Night Live Has Fun With J.J. Watt in Madden NFL 21 Skit

As part of his hosting duties for last night’s episode of Saturday Night Live, Houston Texans defensive end J.J. Watt participated in a skit lampooning the Madden NFL video game franchise. Things start off easy enough, but quickly take a turn for the weird as Watt discovers that the job he’s been brought in to do for the next video game in the franchise isn’t exactly what he had expected.

In the skit, which you can check out below, Watt is providing a bunch of different lines for what is ostensibly Madden NFL 21, the latest and greatest iteration in the EA Sports football franchise. A new version comes out every single year, even when it is mostly just rosters swapping around. Of late, the games have gotten a little more ambitious, however, and the SNL skit plays with that a little bit.

More specifically, Watt begins by recording a bunch of typical lines that one might hear on the field from various football characters, but then they get… weirdly specific, and especially humiliating. After all, this is ostensibly Watt’s digital counterpart spouting off these lines in the game, and the frequency of certain lines seems to imply that the digital Watt isn’t very good.

For a little context here, voice actors often provide tons of different lines for every single character within a video game. Just Google “video game barks,” and you will enter into a wide, wide world of having characters just say… all sorts of stuff. A big reason for this, but certainly not the only, is how many possible scenarios could crop up at any given time, and while there’s potentially fewer possible permutations in a traditional football video game, having a bunch of different lines let’s everything feel fresh and responsive.

What did you think of Watt’s turn as host last night? Did you find the “Madden 21” skit funny? Let us know in the comments, or hit me up directly on Twitter at @rollinbishop to talk all things gaming!

Madden NFL 20 is currently available for PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the latest game in the football gaming franchise right here. Saturday Night Live airs, as the name implies, every Saturday. You can check out all of our previous coverage of the comedy show right here.