Mike Florio and Adam Schefter Had a Twitter Scrap About a Very Niche Distinction
If you like media feuds, you're going to love this little dust-up between ESPN's Adam Schefter and NBC's Mike Florio. It all started when ESPN's Dan Graziano wrote a story about NFL CBA negotiations which was aggregated on NBC's Pro Football Talk and mistakenly said was written by Schefter. After PFT pointed out the story mentioned a "rough deadline," everyone lost their damn minds.
Simply put, I never reported this.
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) February 6, 2020
Simply put, this report is not true. https://t.co/jNBIICZWyo
— George Atallah (@GeorgeAtallah) February 6, 2020
Nobody at ESPN reported this, especially not me. @DanGrazianoESPN said: “While no hard deadline has been established, both sides would prefer to have a deal in place soon so that changes in the CBA structure could go into effect at the start of the new league year on March 18. “ https://t.co/pooWqhMU3o
— Adam Schefter (@AdamSchefter) February 6, 2020
First, NFLPA spokesperson George Attalah and Steelers' player representative Ramon Foster disputing the deadline. Then Schefter complained, saying that not only did he not write the story, but no one at ESPN had said there was a deadline. At some point around here, ESPN quietly edited the story to remove any reference to a deadline.
NOT TRUE!!!!! NOT TRUE. This is a complicated deal and to say we are rushed to complete a deal is a lie. Whoever told you this lie, don’t trust them around your kids or in your house. https://t.co/31if5FiS1a
— Ramon Foster (@RamonFoster) February 6, 2020
I'm happy to admit that I erroneously assumed the "rough deadline" report came from Schefter because he had tweeted a link to Graziano's story, but it's flat-out false that the original story didn't report on a "rough deadline" of March 18.
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) February 7, 2020
Florio immediately admitted the mistake about wrongly crediting Schefter, but disputed Schefter's claim that there was nothing about a deadline and provided receipts backing up his claim.
From original story: "The league has given the players a 'rough deadline' of the start of the 2020 league year (March 18) to work out a new deal. If no deal is in place by then, negotiations are likely to be tabled indefinitely, sources said."
— ProFootballTalk (@ProFootballTalk) February 7, 2020
In the end, Florio got so annoyed with everyone's complaints, he wrote a full post explaining all of that. It ends with this:
"So here’s the bottom line: ESPN.com initially said there’s a “rough deadline” of March 18, and ESPN.com at some point thereafter changed the key language of Graziano’s story without comment, apology, or any type of transparency. And I wouldn’t care about that very much if Schefter hadn’t decided to claim inaccurately to more than 7.7 million Twitter followers that ESPN never reported something that it definitely reported."
So what did we learn? Not all NFL reporters appear to get along. And both sides of NFL CBA negotiations would probably like a deal in place by the time the league's new year begins on March 18th, but there is or isn't a deadline.