ESPN thought it had a shiny new highlight to show its NFL-starved fans on Tuesday morning. But the network thought wrong, and it apologized for the mistake.
During First Take, a clip was shown of Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott firing a touchdown pass to who ESPN thought was new Cowboys wideout George Pickens. After spending his first 3 seasons with the Pittsburgh Steelers, Pickens was acquired by the Cowboys in early May in a trade that contained multiple draft picks.
So, this is going to be Pickens’s much-anticipated first training camp with Dallas, and that training camp was set to begin on Tuesday in Oxnard, Calif. The problem is, Day 1 of Cowboys camp wasn’t scheduled to begin until 11:45 a.m. PT, which was well after First Take was finished airing. So, it would’ve been impossible for the clip to be a new one of Dallas’s new all-SEC quarterback-wideout connection, with Prescott being a Mississippi State product and Pickens being a Georgia guy.
This means the clip that ESPN showed must have been an old clip from an old Cowboys training camp, like, say, a practice in 2023. But it couldn’t have been Prescott hooking up with Pickens.
First Take host Molly Qerim apologized for the mixup later in the show. Here is the apology:
Prescott might have actually hooked up with Pickens on a few passes, or even a touchdown, during Tuesday’s first practice. Soon ESPN will have plenty of connections to show between the 2 former SEC stars. But the network jumped the gun on Tuesday morning and had to admit its huge mistake.
Cory Nightingale, a former sportswriter and sports editor at the Miami Herald and Palm Beach Post, is a South Florida-based freelance writer who covers Alabama for SaturdayDownSouth.com.
