By Justin McKinney, Sports Editor
At this point ESPN needs to stop reporting on the New England Patriots. It is just horrid sports journalism and I truly cannot fathom how Bob Kraft has yet to sue the company for yellow journalism.
Every single report on the Patriots or Tom Brady I have read from ESPN since the Patriots got blown out on Monday Night Football in week four of the 2014 season has been the same garbage. “It’s the end of the patriots”, “Tom Brady isn’t good anymore”, “The Patriots cheat”, “Gronk is unhappy and retiring”.
It just cycles itself out like trash and I feel as though the network feels scorned that Brady ended up winning the 2014 Super Bowl and then doing it again in 2016 as part of what many referred to as his revenge tour for the Deflategate scandal or lack thereof.
This past few weeks have been filled with rumors of Brady retirement and the departure of fellow All-Pro Rob Gronkowski. It amazes me that these rumors ever existed and were publicized given that as recently as three weeks ago reports came out of Julian Edelman, Brady, and Gronkowski taking a trip together in order to work on route running and timing.
These reports are aggressively contradictory and given the fact that one was rooted in a comment made by Gronkowski in February and the talks of Brady seemed more theoretical than anything, I am very confused how ESPN ever even published the stories in the first place.
Brady even went onto say this past week that he planned on playing past 2018. How does a man go from contemplating retirement to saying he wants to play for give or take three years all within a week? To add to this, aside from the reports that dropped this week, Brady has been vocal about continuing playing well past his 42nd birthday several times in the past year.
I realize that I do not work for a large company such as ESPN, however I do consider myself a journalist and it seems that ESPN has become lost on what the term “journalist” means. To me, it means you report facts and make inferences based on those facts rather than what you want to happen as ESPN does.
The facts of almost everything Patriots related since 2014 have point to the opposite of whatever ESPN is reporting and the simple fact is ESPN wants to lay claim to predicting the Patriots downfall.
It does not matter that the media outlet has been predicting this for four years and by the time it happens it could be even longer, when the Patriots do eventually fade from greatness, ESPN is going to say they saw it coming. Tom Brady and the Patriots could win two more Super Bowls and have five more winning seasons, but you can bet when that sixth seasons comes around and Brady is gone and the team struggles ESPN will say they predicted this years ago.