The most exciting moment in last night’s 26-6 snooze fest between the Broncos and the Giants came when NFL Network aired a recorded clip from Denver coach Josh McDaniels, during which he yelled at his offensive linemen, “All we’re trying to do is win a mutherf--king game!”
After the game, the drama hadn’t fully subsided.
Asked about the incident, McDaniels showed the back of his hand to the broadcast operation owned by his boss, Pat Bowlen, and the 31 folks who hold the keys to NFL teams.
“It’s the NFL Network,” McDaniels said, according to the Denver Post. “It doesn’t surprise me.”
Ouch.
McDaniels didn’t elaborate, but we wish he would have. Sure, the NFLN game broadcasts have left something to be desired at times, with Bryant Gumbel breaking out his Kermit the Frog pipes to apply names like “Al” to 49ers running back Frank Gore and to inexplicably refer to Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo as “Rick.” Earlier this year, an audio glitch gave many fans an announcerless game for much of a full quarter. And we still can’t process words uttered by Matt Millen into any message other than “I was the worst executive in the history of organized sports.”
Still, it’s NFL Network. Our single favorite non-NBC channel. So we’re willing to tolerate a periodic glitch, and we don’t think anything NFL Network ever has done would make last night’s mistake something other than a surprise.
Meanwhile, NFLN executive producer Eric Weinberger reiterated the on-air apology that accompained the accidental “F” bomb.
“We wish we could have caught it,” Weinberger said, per the Post. “We apologize for ever airing anything like that, absolutely. Especially on Thanksgiving. It’s a mistake.”
The bigger question that someone will have to answer internally is whether NFLN “should” have caught it. And it’s the kind of question that could be resolved with someone who was gainfully employed on Thanksgiving looking for work by Christmas.
The silver lining in all of this? DJ Steve Porter now has some great ammunition for an update of the best sports mash-up we’ve ever seen.