The NFL news cycle can move pretty fast. Whether it’s hand-timed or laser-timed.
That distinction has provoked an unexpected fracas between yours truly and Adam Schefter of ESPN. And a comment he made today on Pat McAfee’s show has nudged me to do something I didn’t really want to do.
It all started on Wednesday, when I noticed this tweet from the folks at Awful Announcing: “Adam Schefter roasted for trying to rewrite Carnell Tate’s 40 time.”
I knew right away what it meant. I clicked on the link and read the article from Drew Lerner.
Tate (whom we love for among other things being a Lego guy) ran the 40-yard dash in a slower-than-expected time of 4.53 seconds at the Scouting Combine. Schefter, who routinely gets scoops about Drew Rosenhaus clients (more on that later) before anyone else in the media, posted this on Sunday: “Ohio State WR Carnell Tate, a potential top 10 pick, was timed by several NFL executives and GMs on Saturday with a 40 time in the range of 4.45-4.47 seconds. Although the combine registers official times, teams always conduct their own timing, and those measurements with some teams were lower than his clocked 4.5[3].”
There was no similar tweet regarding any other prospect who ran the 40 at the Scouting Combine, even though the underlying circumstance (hand timing versus laser timing) surely affected players other than Tate, a Rosenhaus client.
Put simply, Schefter was doing a solid for a good source. The instincts of those who had “roasted” Schefter were correct.
Here are the two paragraphs from our item on the situation that seemed to particularly rankle Schefter:
“The broader point, as addressed by Lerner, is that some are seeing through Schefter’s ‘report’ as an effort to do a favor for Tate’s agent, Drew Rosenhaus. It’s part of the gig, and it’s something that — to the trained eye — is instantly recognizable.
“Did Schefter canvass multiple teams for their numbers, or did he simply copy and paste a text from Rosenhaus? Given the way the insider sausage gets made, the far safer bet is the latter.”
Schefter, who had ignored entirely the tweet and the post from Awful Announcing, responded to our tweet by posting screenshots of a pair of texts that purport to show communications with team employees regarding the hand-timed measurement for Tate’s 40-yard dash. Added Schefter over the images: “Just to prove you’re wrong, again.”
The response, and his ensuing victory lap with McAfee, was viewed by some as proving that Schefter was right about everything mentioned or suggested in our article. But whether or not he actually texted team officials about Tate’s 40 wasn’t the point. Schefter was clearly doing a favor for Rosenhaus by sowing doubt regarding the official time of 4.53 seconds. And it was just the latest example of Schefter using his 11.5 million-follower platform on Twitter to maintain if not enhance a relationship that helps to fuel the primary reason for his existence: Telling Twitter about a transaction before it’s inevitably announced and, ideally, before anyone else.
Does it matter that he texted at least two people to corroborate what Rosenhaus had told him about Tate’s supposedly flawed official 40 time? Frankly, Rosenhaus is such an important source for Schefter that he may have decided to embark on the effort to curry favor without an express request from Rosenhaus.
Again, the hand-laser distinction surely affected other players. Why was Tate the only one featured in the tweet? Why wasn’t it couched as a deeper issue regarding whether the official 40 times for all 189 prospects who ran are too slow?
I wasn’t going to peel the curtain back this far. I decided to let Schefter have his win regarding the screenshots, disingenuous as it was. The willingness to exercise restraint was bolstered by the fact that I heard from several people in the media (unprompted) who thought it was a mistake for Schefter to not own one of the key elements of his overall information-gathering process and move on.
He didn’t. On McAfee’s, Schefter said this of my item: “It was uncalled for. It was unprofessional. And it was unnecessary.”
Whether it was “called for” was for me to decide. Awful Announcing had written about it, and I decided it was an interesting point to make about how NFL insider sausage gets made.
Whether it was “professional” is a matter of opinion. Is it “professional” to explain to the audience why something that seemed on the surface to be unusual happened?
Whether it was “necessary” is inherently subjective. But I can understand why the person at the center of the issue would deem it unnecessary to explore why he was doing a favor for Rosenhaus, whose fee on the first four years of Tate’s contract will be tied directly to how high Tate is drafted.
Usually, Schefter will truly regard a gratuitous tweet aimed at keeping the information flowing as a necessary part of the job. That’s the best way to handle it. Pushing back invites further scrutiny. Already, folks are noticing that, when it comes to the various Rosenhaus clients, Schefter is the one who is getting the information first.
It happened today with the DJ Moore trade. Schefter reported the news about another Rosenhaus client before anyone else.
I first noticed that Schefter had become the most-favored-reporter for all significant Rosenhaus scoops in 2018. When a clear trend emerged of Schefter having a tweet posted before others would even get the heads-up, an inquiry was made as to how Schefter had landed at the front of the line. Per a source with direct knowledge of the situation, Rosenhaus explained at the time that Schefter “tweets all my new client signings and our pictures,” adding “that is very valuable to me.”
The Tate tweet is another version of that same dynamic. The trading of favors to help ensure the flow of information, for someone whose professional lifeblood consists of telling us what we’re eventually going to find out once the official announcement is made — often just a few minutes after the exclusive! tweet was posted.
So whether the information about Tate’s hand-timed 40-yard-dash was fed to Schefter by Rosenhaus or whether Rosenhaus planted the seed for Schefter’s own research or whether Schefter did it proactively as a gesture no different than sending out $16,000 worth of chocolates, Schefter’s decision to focus on a potential flaw in the official, laser-timed 40 from Tate and to not make that point for anyone else who ran it can be explained in very simple terms.
Schefter was doing a favor for someone who does plenty of favors for him.
