NFL Network ignored Tyreek Hill developments during the draft

[KC Wolf]

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An hour before the draft began, a major NFL story broke — perhaps what will become the biggest story of the offseason. But if you were tuned to the TV channel owned and operated by the league, you saw and heard nothing about it.

According to Andrew Marchand of the New York Post, NFL Network didn’t mention the troubling new Tyreek Hill audio from the time the it emerged until the first round ended.

“There is a real feeling that Hill, a Pro Bowler and one of the NFL’s most impactful players, may never play in the league again,” Marchand writes. “The situation, therefore, deserves some discussion if a network expects to be fully trusted. NFLN never found the time.”

It’s really not a surprise. All employees of NFL Network work for the NFL. So when it comes to making real-time decisions about whether to discuss sensitive matters regarding the NFL in real time, it’s better to say nothing (and risk being called out externally by others in the media) or to say something (and risk being called out internally by league executives).

This assumes that a careful, deliberate decision was made as to whether to cover the story. It’s possible that the network executives opted on a knee-jerk basis that they’d be pressing an appendage against a third rail, and simply moved on without considering the broader obligations to an audience that doesn’t always realizes that the messager, message, and messenger are one in the same.

So for the same reason that NFLN employees were told not to report on the identity of the first overall pick in order to not undermine the TV broadcast, NFLN quite possibly avoided the Tyreek Hill subject in order to avoid hurling a brick at its own glass McMansion.

Then again, ESPN didn’t do much better. The story, per Marchand, was mentioned in the hour prior to the draft. Once the draft began, however, the subject disappeared.

It’s unclear how NFL Network handled the issue on Friday. A network spokesman did not respond to an inquiry from PFT regarding whether the league’s morning programming addressed the issue.