It was just hours before the NFL’s crown jewel of the offseason, the NFL draft, was set to begin, and it was the league’s reigning MVP that had sucked up all the attention.
That’s because of a bombshell report from ESPN’s Adam Schefter, who said that sources told him Aaron Rodgers’ discontent with the Green Bay Packers had gotten to the point where he had told some people “within the organization that he does not want to return to the team.”
But as Schefter told Dan Patrick on Thursday, it wasn’t that he got this info the morning of the draft and reported it. He had heard various things about Rodgers leading up to the draft, and there was talk that morning that the San Francisco 49ers might have sniffed around about a Rodgers trade. So he had to report his story then.
“It was nothing that morning that came in, that all of a sudden said to me, ‘Yeah, he wants out, you should report this,'” he said. “It was just an accumulation of information throughout the entire offseason.”
DP: "You chose to break the [Rodgers] news on Draft Day?"
Schefter: "That is absolutely accurate, correct. It was nothing that morning that came in that all of a sudden said to me yeah he wants out, you should report this… It was just an accumulation of information". pic.twitter.com/SJEPv3ssLu
— Dan Patrick Show (@dpshow) May 6, 2021
I’ve seen a lot of angry tweets about this, a bunch of, “How dare you wait? CLICKBAIT!” and so on. And it’s wrong.
Look, reporters have information coming in all the time. Sometimes they need more time to report it and verify it. At times, their sources might ask them to hold it until a certain time, or their editors might say, “Can you hold this for a bit to get some more audience on it?” And that’s OK! That’s how the sausage is made.
Fans might read this as curious timing, but there were many other factors. Maybe it was just that Schefter finally got enough info to go with the report. Or maybe he felt that he needed to get it out there because, with a marquee event happening, other reporters would be sure to pick up the trail. Or maybe some of this was a case of, “Let’s have a huge story to report on the day of the draft.” And if so, it worked: ESPN had stellar ratings, even as many feared that the numbers would drop drastically. Schefter still operates journalistically, in many ways, but he’s certainly crossed over into the realm of entertainer and it’s part of his job to engage the audience at key times.
There’s no reason to blame him or ESPN.
