Cowboys, Giants speak up on mic
FRISCO, Texas – Dak Prescott and Daniel Jones saw what happened to Sam Darnold.
Mic’d up on national TV for a recent “Monday Night Football,” ESPN’s broadcast aired the second-year quarterback equating the voracious Patriots’ defense to “seeing ghosts.” Jets coach Adam Gase was upset. And the sound bite followed Darnold. In the Jets’ next game, against Jacksonville, the Jaguars’ mascot trolled Darnold with a ghost costume.
Neither quarterback preparing to start in this week’s “Monday Night Football” contest in East Rutherford, New Jersey, between the Cowboys (4-3) and Giants (2-6) envied Darnold. “Tough,” said Jones, the Giants’ rookie, adding he did not want to be mic’d up for the divisional matchup.
“Super unfair,” the Cowboys’ Prescott said. “That was bad to me by the brand, by whoever put that out. Because if you play quarterback, anyone who’s played this has said that. I don’t care who you are: Tom Brady’s said it, or he’s mentioned it.”
Cowboys’ coaches and players agreed: The issue at hand with ESPN’s broadcast of the sound bite wasn’t Darnold’s sentiment. It is not abnormal, they said, for a quarterback to “see ghosts,” or struggle to decrypt a defense, especially one as dominant as the Patriots’ 2019 squad. But the NFL’s collective bargaining agreement aims to protect players from potentially embarrassing footage when they are required to be mic’d.
The Oct. 21 Jets-Patriots game did not clearly pass that test, players felt.
“It’s different than sending a tweet or posting something. Those are all the things that you kind of control,” said Cowboys tight end Jason Witten, who spent 2018 as an “MNF” color analyst. “I’m not saying (the comment) was bad. I don’t think it’s bad. But I’d be upset, if I was a young player or if it was a young player on my team. I’d be a little disappointed.”
In the aftermath of the Jets-Patriots broadcast, Gase and running back Le’Veon Bell expressed similar disappointment. Gase said the broadcast decision “bothered” him. Bell tweeted that the NFL “screwed Sammy over…there’s a reason we’ve never heard other QB’s (sic) frustrated” like that. The league “did Sam dirty as hell,” he added.
Striking a balance can be challenging. On one hand, ESPN wants to “take fans behind the scenes,” analyst Booger McFarland said, “and give them information they otherwise can’t normally get.” Wiring quarterbacks allows fans a closer lens and deeper insight into the game and the men who play it. Decisions what to air are made in real time, with many factors.
The NFL’s CBA requires each quarterback be mic’d by NFL Films at least one game during the season. But it also gives players and team representatives 24 hours to review footage before NFL Films releases it. A player or team rep has the right to “embargo any material he deems to be extremely sensitive or inappropriate,” Article 51, Section 13 says. So, too, with material that is confidential or could create competitive disadvantage.
For live footage, like ESPN’s Monday mic, an NFL Films producer screens all audio before giving ESPN a choice of clips, a person with knowledge of the production confirmed to USA TODAY Sports. The person spoke on condition of anonymity due to the sensitivity of the matter. League broadcast partners, the CBA says, must “use best efforts to refrain from broadcasting any captured audio that contains inappropriate or sensitive content.”
Players felt airing Darnold’s ghost comment during the game violated that guideline.
“That’s a young player and you’ve got to be able to feel like you’ve got some ability to be protected for that,” Witten said. “I think they’ll learn from it.”
ESPN does not announce ahead of games whether it will mic a player, ESPN senior director of communications Bill Hofheimer said Sunday. But leading into the Cowboys-Giants NFC East matchup, Jones said he would “rather not be mic’d.” Prescott said Friday that he doesn’t ask in advance nor decide whether he’s mic’d up — a Cowboys staffer simply tells him after he arrives at the stadium on game day. Against the Dolphins in September, NFL Films released footage of Prescott at the line of scrimmage. “Oh! Spicy nuggets are back,” he quipped after a play call. “I might have to stop on the way home.”
Prescott said neither the spicy nuggets comment nor Darnold’s will change his approach during games he’s mic’d.
“If I say something bad and they don’t protect me, they don’t protect me,” Prescott said. “Bad on them. Bad on the brand. I am who I am.”
Witten, on the other hand, will continue to eschew the mic even after his year at ESPN lent him insight into its advantages for broadcasts and fan interest. No doubt, the rare active player with “MNF”-Cowboys employment history would make for compelling material Monday. But Witten said he has tolerated the mic just one full game in 16 seasons and felt it was too big on his shoulder pads. The only other time he was mic’d, he felt he played poorly in the first half. At halftime, he demanded Cowboys equipment director Mike McCord remove the contraption. No chance he’ll be mic’d Monday, Witten said.
“It’s probably best,” he added with a grin. “We haven’t put it on ever since (the halftime removal). That’s kind of my excuse.
“No, I wasn’t seeing ghosts.”