The Ringer NFL Show - Three Big Media Stories Heading Into the 2022 Season

Episode Date: August 24, 2022

Nora Princiotti and Bryan Curtis discuss three of the biggest NFL media stories heading into the new season. Hosts: Nora Princiotti and Bryan Curtis Associate Producer: Isaiah Blakely Additional Production Supervision: Arjuna Ramgopal and Conor Nevins Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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And welcome to the Ringer NFL show. I am Nora Pintziotti. It is Tuesday, August 23rd. as I'm recording this, which means that we're in the middle of the preseason. Training camp has sort of wrapped up in the big sort of dog days of everybody watching practice. And all of that, the heat of the summer, I think, applies to us in the media, just as much as it does to players and teams. It's preseason for everybody.

Today's episode overall is going to be devoted to previewing the biggest storylines of 2022 and NFL media coverage. And for that, I have none of us. other than the ringer's Brian Curtis with me. And Brian, do you have a favorite training camp trope that I can introduce you with? Are you like the savvy vet here to impart wisdom? Are you trying to get one percent better with every podcast? Like, pick your poison. What do you want?

What's your message today? I was going to say, I'm not betting on myself this year. I'm certainly not in the best shape of my life. So let's go with savvy veteran, taking a, taking a rookie under my wing. I like it. I like it. I don't know. I feel like I'm going to take the leap. I'm ready for it. Actually, I don't want to hold myself to that whatsoever. We here are much, I think we're much smarter than some of these players when they get in front of microphones because they've got big goals. I'm not about that. I'm about manageable, lowering expectations, exceeding lowered expectations. That's what it's all about. But Brian, you wrote a story last week for the ringer.com called NFL Meekable. Media Training Camp 101, which featured some of these tropes and these things that we hear every summer that we were just referring to all of the stories that we kind of see repeated in locker rooms at the start of every season over and over again.

But there is something a little bit different or at least a return to what it used to be like this year because locker rooms have sort of reopened and media access is a little bit more like it was. before the pandemic. What did you notice when you were reporting that story about all of us in the NFL commentary at sort of stepping back into into our old ways? Does it feel like nature is healing when I see a second year quarterback getting a little more vocal with his teammates? That was actually, I believe Dr. Fauci monitored that how many of the second year quarterbacks were taking a step forward.

It's amazing. Kenny Pickett was getting. more vocal in his first training camp. So we usually put Zach Wilson in the zone, right? Your second ear guy, I'm feeling comfortable. I can go in. I can talk to people. But Kenny Pickett also getting more vocal within weeks.

But more vocal as opposed to what? Well, that's sort of the unanswered question of these stories. Is it that they, they, I mean, I know he was at Pitt and they share the facilities across the street. maybe maybe everyone in Pittsburgh was was woefully aware all of last season, man, we never hear Kenny Pickett from over there. We never know what he's saying. And now it's just like, man, Kenny Pickett's more vocal.

That's a confusing one to me. Usually you have to establish a baseline. You do. Usually you have to be watching practice and watch the quarterback walk over and correct a receiver after he runs the wrong route in a practice rep. That's sort of your peg. for the young quarterback becoming a little more vocal. That's my favorite.

I guess the other favorite I have is the training camp fight. Every training camp fight is reported. But you start to read the article, and by the end of the article, you get the players saying how it wasn't meaningful, and we're all just teammates, and we all love each other, which sort of begs a question of why we're reading about the fight,

if it happens every year, and if it, in fact, meant nothing in terms of the relationships between the players on the team. Well, then the two other constants are, it is typically reported as having been chippy out there.

And then the other piece is that everyone blames the weather. You know, it's so hot. Of course, we're swinging at each other. It's just really hot. It's just really hot here. Like, I've experienced heat before in my life and it's never,

well, I don't know if I can say that it's never caused me to want to, to, to, swing at someone, but it certainly never made me do it. And then it leads into everybody choosing their favorite word to describe a meaningless fight, which is either skirmish, fracas is a good one. There's a bunch of them. The thesaurus is rich with options of language to describe an NFL training camp fight.

And somebody who did this, do they hand out a list when you're on your first day at the job? Be like, can you check these things off? So obviously no, right? Not literally. But it is so funny, particularly actually the training camp fights one and what I was just saying about all the different words that you have. I can put myself in the position of sitting on the hill next to a Patriots training camp practice, watching a fight breakout. and then hearing and being part of just a chorus of beat writers going, oh, looks like a little skirmish out there.

No, I think that's more of a kerfuffle. No, come on, guys, that's a fracas. That's such a fracas. That one's, there's nothing there but a fracas. And just, like, it is, we are all in on the bit, and yet we can't stop ourselves. Like, that's the funny part is that every person who does one of these jobs knows that a lot of this is really useless reporting.

it doesn't say anything meaningful. But then all of a sudden, you're face to face with some, you know, some wide receiver who's telling you that, yeah, Zach Wilson pulled me aside and he's really getting particular

about how he wants me to make the cut. And, you know, you don't break off at 11 steps. It's got to be 12 steps. And then all of a sudden it's like, well, I guess I'm going to write it. And then we just do it all over again. So it's sort of charming to see it resurfaced,

particularly after. the circumstances of access were so different the last couple of years, even though it can get a little bit, a little bit nauseating in the sense that it's just like, just any of this matter, guys. It couldn't possibly. But anyway, we were going to talk about what we kind of together identified as three of the biggest storylines in NFL media writ large for this season. And the first one, I'm really glad that we're going to talk about because I just need a primer so big. badly on what is going on with all the new broadcast pairings and at the networks. Everything has changed. It is so hard to keep track of. Nancy and Romo, thank you for being like the one constant in my life.

What will you be watching when the season starts, Brian, in terms of all the new pairings this fall and what all of the networks are doing as far as their coverage? It's amazing that Nancy Romer are now the grand old men of NFL broadcast TV. They've been together since 2017. I think of all of them. Yeah, exactly. I think the interesting one for me, the most interesting one is Amazon, just because it's different. They're going to be showing Thursday night football this year, taking it over from basically every network that took a shot at showing Thursday night football over the last few years.

and the very basic and potentially most interesting part of this is there are a lot of people in this world and I am related to a few of them that are not going to understand how to watch Thursday night football when it rolls out on week two. Let's just, I mean, hear from the ringer we can talk about, oh, I'm going to have this streaming service and I'm watching this and I'm watching this. Folks, I have a couple of uncles that love football that will watch. any NFL football product. And I guarantee you that week, they're going to be calling me and be like, what do I do?

I don't have this. I don't have prime. I don't know what this is. I have direct TV. I thought I got everything. And it's going to be a barrier to entry for a lot of people that would otherwise be watching that broadcast. Has Amazon tried to do anything to get people to understand what they're going to have to do?

or is this just we're doing it live? I think it's going to be a lot of doing it live. There's certainly going to be a big education thing. And I think, again, after that sort of week one freak out, you can have a lot of people figuring it out. There was some news today that they made a deal with direct TV so that bars and restaurants can show Thursday night football on TV. Bars and restaurants are oftentimes not hooked up for streaming.

So that's a big deal for people that are going out and watching football in that way. But I think that's interesting. I think the other interesting thing is they're starting from scratch. They can do whatever they want. And from talking to people, I think the game is going to look like the game always looks because you don't want people turning that on in Amazon and being like, this is weird. And I don't understand what I'm watching. You want Thursday night football to look like football.

But the pregame is going to be different with the different cast of characters. There's going to be a lot of alternate streams that they're going to play around with, many of which I think are only going to run like four weeks. But like, okay, let's have dude perfect do an alternate stream. Let's play with that. So whatever's going to be Amazon-y about it is going to be around the edges, I think, rather than the game itself. And when they, are there any of these alternate streams that are, I have caught your eye?

I couldn't tell you who all of those pairings that they've come up with are, but are any of those established and we know what they'll be yet? Other than dude perfect, I have not seen that. Other than dude perfect. There's always been a big Pat McAfee chase for who's going to get the Pat. McAfee alternate stream, ultimately did not. That was, that was going to be, that was, that was a question in the back of my mind. But it's, they could get so weird with it, right?

Like, one day we're going to click on and it's going to be the like, the Madonna alternate stream and just see like people, famous people who have no connection to the game, just commenting on football. Was it the Grunk brothers alternate stream the other day that was breaking that news about Tom Brady going to the Raiders? Right. Yep, yep, yep. We could just get the made-up Grog Brothers news alternate stream.

There's a lot of options. There's a lot of different directions they could go with it. Speaking of networks that have had or channels that have had some experience with alternate broadcasts, what are you looking up for ESPN this season? What's going on over there? Nora, I had a little mortality moment recently because I realized that not only has ESPN and Monday Night Football been having an identity crisis for seemingly forever. I realize that my first story I ever wrote about said identity crisis was in 2005,

which either means I'm older. Their identity crisis is old. They've tried to recruit a lot of people to do Monday night football, among them Jason Witten, Joe Tessator, Booger McFarland, Steve Levy, et cetera, et cetera. And then eventually they decided, okay, here's how. we solve the problem, let's go pay huge money for another network's announcing team. Right. So that was the end. So I think it's a great idea. It solves your problem on that sense. On the other hand, it's also throwing your hands up and saying, well, we really just never managed to

fix this on our own. I don't think that. I'm like, I think it's a great idea. I think it's like, you have the money for it. Why not just go do it? People already like this thing. You've searched for forever to try to come up with something that works. I like this strategy very much. And I wonder if they will feel, because we're going to get more Manning cast, right? Mm-hmm. Absolutely.

And I wonder if that will at least solve the feeling of, oh, here's this Monday Night Football Broadcast that hasn't really clicked and they've been searching for the right pairing for so long. And now here's the Manningcast. That's this shiny new thing that everybody. loves and they're like cutting them off at the knees. And I wonder if it will like also sort of help under get rid of that dynamic a little bit. I'm sure it'll ultimately be there somewhat because it doesn't really work to watch both at the same time. But I just, I remember feeling like

the vibe there was so off last year just because the broadcast wasn't great. And then there was this other thing that was getting all the positive buzz. And it just seemed like, ooh, I don't, that's not great. I don't know if I want to be a part of that. It was not a good vibe. It's not a good vibe to say we're so proud of our work that we have hired two incredibly famous ex-quarterbacks and we're going to program against you on ESPN2 with that.

So you're right. Now it feels like we have the stars on the main show and we have the stars on the manning cast. and everything is a little more even. Do you think Joe and Troy should wear those canary yellow Monday night sports coats that we haven't seen since the 70s?

No, no. I think they should just be like, we know them, they're good at what they do. I think they should lean into that. I think that's sort of been like, we've had the Bougar Mobile. There have been so many gimmicks. I've got to imagine it feels very good for them to be like,

okay, the people leading the ship here are experienced. I mean, it's hard to say well liked because it seems like everybody loves to hate on announcers, but actually globally like a team that people think is as good at this. And they can call some, they can do a good job calling some football games.

And I think everyone would just be so thrilled with that. And that seems nice. You don't want a vintage store kind of look. You know, so let's put the Booger Mobile aside, but you don't want Canary Yellow. Hey, it's just like Howard and Dandy Don back. How about some, we're going to have some nice neutrals, some like really dumb banter, but like a very professional game calling operation. I think that would be delightful.

Yeah. And if you're, if you're ESPN, that's job one. Let's, let's make people like this and sound like a broadcast we can get by. I think that it's... Because, like, if we can move off this in a second, but, like, I have felt as a viewer, like it's sort of one of these things is not like the other, right? And I think that is the thing that they're trying to fix,

where that broadcast doesn't feel like it's somehow second fiddle to Sunday, Thursday, or the stuff that we see in the playoffs or even like a Sunday afternoon. And it just seems like by kind of saying, well, if we can't beat them, not join them, but hire them away. Like, that seems like not a foolproof way of accomplishing that, but the sort of best available route to it. So I'm excited to watch ESPN this fall is what I'm saying. Absolutely.

My job is to complain about announcers, but this is probably the best group of a crew analysts that I've ever seen in my lifetime when you look at like Collinsworth, Tony Romo, Troy Aikman. Yeah. So it was just getting that one. last straggler on to that tier, and I think they're there. NFL kickoff is still a few weeks away, but you can get in on the action now on Fandual Sportsbook with their NFL Super Win bonus.

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So the second thing I wanted to talk to you about was, I don't know if you picked up on this. It has not been the happiest, rosiest summer of NFL pertinent news. The biggest story in the league, the summer, I think, has been everything pertaining to Deshawn Watson and all the allegations that he's faced. and the league's discipline over it. We've also had Dan Snyder spending a large portion of the summer

hiding from a congressional subpoena on his yacht in the Mediterranean. That's been in the news. The Dolphins punishment that was not overtanking, was just overtampering, but reads very much as though it was maybe a little bit also over tanking was another big thing. And I'm curious what you have noticed about how NFL media, and when I say that, I mean just the whole sort of writ large NFL media.

I don't mean specifically like NFL network. But how the coverage of all of this sort of less than savory stuff has unwound? In the specific case of Watson, and this is not unique to sports writers or NFL beat writers, but it's, you, you see a media that is very uncertain, and that's probably the nice way to say it, about how to talk about sexual assault. Right. The vocabulary is shaky. They don't know what to say.

And then I think further in that, and one of our colleagues sent me this story the other day, there's a sense of, okay, the NFL has made this finding about Deshaun Watson. And we're waiting until a couple of days ago for this penalty to be handed down. and you see writers unsure of then what to do. Do we just keep filing regular training camp stories about this guy? There was one the other day. Again, somebody said me that was like, oh, here's how Deshawn Watson got number four from one of his fellow Cleveland Browns.

And I'm like, this feels like normal training camp reporting. Surely we're not just going to run this with this big giant rain cloud sitting here. can't we can't possibly do this, can we? But we have. And that to me is just very, very, very strange. And that's being nice. Yeah. Particularly, I think I read that story too.

And there was an element of it of, well, how nice that he's had this support system made up of an increasing number of teammates who he's gotten to know through things like an agreement over a jersey and subsequent gifts being handed back and forth. that it's, it's, tone deaf, I think, feels like a nice way of putting it. But it, I went there for a day and it was very strange to just watch that happen because, and this is not to rag on beat writers. I've been one and it's hard. And being in a situation like that is not something that I envy of just figuring out

how to do it every day. But you would notice that like everybody's gossiping about it, right? Like you see people you haven't seen in a while and they all talk to you about it. And then the mics go on and it's much more business as usual. And I think there is this feeling of, well, what am, like, what am I going to do? But I think if, unfortunately, if we writ large were better equipped to write about these subjects, report about these subjects, it would be more apparent to everybody, the dissonance that comes when people do that

because it's apparent to me. It's apparent to a lot of people, I think, but in some corners, it just is not happening. And there is a difference in how the people who are writing those stories are talking about the situation when, you know, when the cameras are off versus when they're on, which I don't think is because they're,

they're fundamentally disingenuous. It's just because they're navigating how to do their jobs. But it does call into question this thing of like, well, if you know this, then how is what's coming out on the other end on the written page so different? And it's very uncomfortable. And I agree with you that I think it's exposed a lot of areas in which people could do a better job. We saw Deshaun Watson's various statements to the media. the other day conflicting statements as they turned out from one day to the next,

there's a sense from him, from the Browns and from everybody that they just want to move on. They want to, they want to put all, they want to try as insane and morally wrong as it seems to put this behind them. And it feels like that when we shift to here is normal training camp coverage of this player, that people in the media are giving into that impulse. They are, they are in their own small way moving it on. And you're like, no, no, no. It hasn't, it hasn't moved on. It hasn't at all.

And that, that just makes me, again, that just makes me cringe. And I don't know. I think it's shown. It's been interesting to sort of rethink a little bit of the insider culture of how most NFL reporting happens the how normal it is for stories or just sourced material to be sourced from a single person. And, and even while we were talking about with how training camp reporting on totally not sensitive, like whatever normal football in July, training camp subjects

happens where so much reporting, the media environment is really tough. It's tough to get information. It's tough to figure out what's really going on. It's very controlled. So much reporting is actually just reporting one person's perspective in a moment in time. It's just what somebody said. It's not really like what's actually going on here. It's this is how Tom Brady addressed what's going on here. This is what Bill Belichick said on Tuesday about why the Patriots offense isn't doing a good job. It's not it's not holistic and all these different angles. It's just sort of, here's one thing that is true that the person said it, but we don't really have great ways of interrogating if it is

actually true or if they just think that or if they are just full of crap or whatever. But you end up getting, people do end up not totally grappling with, okay, well, what, what narrative, what perspective are we pushing forward? Because so much. of how NFL reporting works is to represent what people's perspectives are on a given subject in a given moment. And so if it's Deshaun Watson's current perspective, as he's publicly stating it, that he did nothing wrong, the muscle memory is not to offer all of the counterarguments to that. The muscle memory is basically to say, Deshaun Watson, proclaims his innocence and to kind of leave it at that. And I think that's one of the, I mean,

one of the most striking moments to me was, was at the beginning of this month when the plaintiff's attorney in most of the cases, Tony Busby, it was like holding up a poster of an Adam Schaefter tweet as an example of a tweet about Deshaun believing that he wanted to let the legal process, the grand jury process play out because he believes that he's innocent. and just sort of leaving it at that, holding up a blown up image of that tweet as an example of this is why people who have experienced harassment

at the hands of a powerful person don't come forward because the person in power has all of these mechanisms around them to advance their narrative and people who have less power and may have been victimized in the situation aren't able to do that.

That was just such a kind of a like mind-boggling moment to me of like, oh, we have this, you know, the insider who, and we know that when it's a torn ACL, yes, of course, an agent texts one thing and then it's on the news. But now that that system is being applied to this, it does create all of these like really serious side effects. And it's just, it's, it's made me think about like, oh, it seems so harmless when it's, don't start this guy because he's dealing with this injury. But all of a sudden, like all of the ramifications of the ways that we just sort of normally do business are under scrutiny in, in ways that I don't know that it's holding up to particularly well. But

that's, that's my spiel. Muscle memory is such a good phrase because it's, you're right. It's totally clear. It works for these, for entertainment purposes only, stories about new contracts and trades and is completely, the same person is completely unequipped to write about these kind of things. If you've had some, a story you wrote or in this case, story you tweeted held up in that kind of manner by a lawyer, shouldn't that be a, I'm rethinking everything kind of moment in your life? I would think so, but I don't, I don't know if it, it's, just so how everybody does everything.

Not everybody. You know, I shouldn't generalize because there have been so many places, particularly the New York Times, that have done such amazing journalism and have proven that there are still people who are doing the legwork and looking at documents and cold calling dozens and dozens and dozens of people and really attacking it in that way that we think of like, this is how the big story. get broken, that still absolutely happens. There are places that really prized that, and we can see that it does, it does matter. It does make a difference. But I mean, something like, it gets to something that's just so fundamental that most NFL reporting relies on single sources. And if you rely on one source and all of a sudden you're not talking about something that's, that's, transactional, that's sort of just like a basic fact. It's not something that can be a matter of

perspective. Then there's there's no way to do it without potentially distorting the picture of what's happening because you just, you just are not, even if it's not something as sort of sinister as this, you are really only reporting what one person thinks in one moment in time. It's not, it's it's not necessarily predictive. It's not, it's not comprehensive. It's just what is it right now according to one party? And I do think that we have a increasing understanding of how inadequate that can be once we get past the most basic types of pieces of information that are available to be learned. Totally agree.

Totally agree. All right. Well, we're going to end on one that's hopefully a little bit later. I don't know if you've seen this. I've been obsessed with the idea that Tom Brady left Buccaneers camp, which he did for an extended leave of practice over the last week or so. He is back now. But there was a big rumor going around and some very expertly outlined Reddit theories that he was actually on the Fox show The Masked Singer. as part of his agreement with Fox

and they're taping right now and Joe Buck did it once. So maybe Brady did it too. Brady said that this didn't happen. It seems pretty outlandish. But I love it so much that I won. Had to ask you, Brian, in any of your eminent wisdom

about all of these broadcasting corporations, can you tell us anything to even just speculate on Tom Brady, the masked singer, what's up with Brady and Fox these days? Yeah, the weirdest part about Tom Brady's $375 million contract with Fox was that he was going to be some kind of goodwill ambassador for the network. In the old days, that would mean going to the upfronts and, you know, schmoozing with advertisers. Maybe now that means following in the footsteps of not just Joe Buck, but Rudy Giuliani

and pulling off the giant mask. Scott Head on the other show people watch on Fox besides football. I don't I don't have any any firmer reporting for you on that. Though I did in my travels this summer here, I don't know if you even know that this rises to the level of a rumor. It may not even be mass singer level, but I heard more than one person in television, wonder aloud.

Is Tom Brady ever going to actually call a game for Fox? or is this one of those things that's a press release that benefits everybody? And Tom Brady, because either he doesn't want to or it just never comes to pass, we'll never actually announce a game. What do you think about that? That's really interesting. Can we call that buzz? I feel like a couple people separately talking about the same thing and just sort of a casual tone equates to buzz.

Sure. Are you comfortable with that? Cool. Yeah. Cool, cool. So the thing that's interesting about that to me is that I don't feel like Brady, I think Brady's post-playing days, and we might have gotten a little bit of a window into this in the temporary retirement. And maybe another one with all the stuff with the dolphins, right? And is he going to be an executive?

Is he going to be sort of a player coach? All of the different iterations of post-football life or transition into post-football life that we have seen him. considering in all these different ways. I don't think he has any idea what life is going to be like for him after he's done playing football. This is not like an original idea. I think plenty of

people who have spent time around him have definitely said like, this guy's going to have a tough time when the game is not his life anymore. I know he's Tom Brady and he's got this family that he loves and all these different opportunities.

But like, that's going to be a tough, tough, tough, tough, tough thing for him. I don't think he is ready. I don't think that he's ready to sort of embrace that unknown. I think it's genuinely scary for him. And I wonder if all of these different clothing line, movie production studio, Fox Steel, like, I think part of why there's maybe just this air of, is this really real or is this really going to happen?

Is that I don't think that in his heart of hearts, he can like picture it in his mind's eye. It doesn't mean that he's not making a genuine commitment if that's what he's doing. But I can see it being really easy for people to feel kind of like, I don't know. Because once in any context, once he sort of starts getting into what's it going to be like when he's not playing anymore, so much uncertainty just like comes out of every pore of that man's body. And I think there's no way that that wouldn't necessarily translate. So I don't have a take or a feeling on whether or not Brady and Fox would have come together and been like, oh, what if we just do this press release and it'll get a lot of buzz and be a whole thing?

but I can very much see the parties involved in that understanding that this is an agreement being made about a part of that guy's life, that he has not like wrapped his arms around and really figured out what he wants from it or what he thinks it's going to be like. So that's very interesting. I would be really curious to see him call a game. I would like to see it happen just out of curiosity. I can't say his podcasting experience makes me all that bullish on how good it would be. But I will close this with another frequent media trope, which is that I don't want to be the person in the position of underestimating Tom Brady.

So I suppose we will have to just wait and see and tune in or not tune in to the masked singer to find out that piece of the puzzle. I mean, I definitely, I will say this, Fox wants Tom Brady to announce football games. That is absolutely the case. You know, if there's any kind of convenience here, but also, and here's all, I'll leave you this last theory. Tom Brady goes to Fox. He announces games. But when he's flying to all those stadiums, he's auditing the league franchises,

owners to prepare for his next move, which may be owning part of the team. You know, it's a fact-finding mission, dressed up as an announcing job. I like that. Thank you very much, everyone for listening. This has been the Ringer NFL show, NFL Media 22 edition. Thank you very much to Brian Curtis for joining me today and offering your infinite wisdom. We will be back tomorrow with more coverage of the preseason and the upcoming season. Thank you to Isaiah Blakely for production on this episode and to Connor Nevins and Arjuna Ramkaw for additional production supervision.