SI

Jim Gray Embarrassed Himself and Still Didn’t Get the Tom Brady Scoop: TRAINA THOUGHTS

Jim Gray asks Tom Brady if ESPN 'overstepped boundaries' with retirement report

Jimmy Traina

1. Two days after ESPN’s Jeff Darlington and Adam Schefter reported that Tom Brady was retiring, the future Hall of Fame quarterback appeared on his weekly SiriusXM radio show, Let's Go, to say of his future, “I think I just said I’m going to take it day by day. It really is, I’ll take it by the moment and figure out when I feel really confident to allow people to, you know, I understand my decision affects a lot of people’s lives. So when that decision comes it will come.”

That decision came about 14 hours later when Brady officially announced his retirement with an Instagram post on Tuesday morning.

It’s extremely curious that Brady wouldn’t reveal that decision on his own radio show and I’m sure SiriusXM executives are miffed that he used a social media platform hours later to break the news.

Brady really should’ve given his co-host, Jim Gray, the retirement scoop just as a thank you to Gray for doing the dirty work and trying to discredit Darlington and Schefter.

Here was a question that Gray asked Brady at one point Monday night:

“So everyone kinda got to see a five-hour obituary about [you]. You didn’t get to partake in this because you were out of the country. There were all kinds of tributes rolling in, all the news stations broke into programming and were talking about you and perhaps never throwing a football again in a way that was such past tense that one who might have just casually tuned in might have thought you were no longer with us. Does this overstep the boundaries of having the proper respect for all that you have achieved in not allowing you to be able to do this on your own timeline?”

Let me type out that last part one more time since it’s so absurd:

“Does this overstep the boundaries of having the proper respect for all that you have achieved in not allowing you to be able to do this on your own timeline?”

How Gray could ask that question with a straight face is beyond me. Jeff Darlington and Adam Schefter are reporters. They don’t work for Tom Brady. They work for ESPN. Their job is to break NFL news. That’s what they get paid to do.

To ask whether two reporters should pass on breaking news to “allow” a player to do it on their own timeline after saying the reporters “overstepped” is pathetic. To imply that Darlington and Schefter were disrespectful to Brady is comical.

Darlington and Schefter would  deserve criticism for only one thing: being wrong. But they were right.

And Gray embarrassed himself for nothing.

2. The strong NFL ratings continue to roll in. Fox says 50.42 million people watched Niners-Rams in the late window on Sunday, while CBS says 47.85 million people watched the Bengals upset the Chiefs in the early window. That game peaked with a whopping 60.99 million viewers.

3. This tweet deserves a million likes. 

4. First things first: Playing blackjack is much better in-game entertainment that shooting T-shirts into the crowd or whatever nonsense teams come up with, so props to the Sixers for doing that.

This contestant last night, though, must not have known the rules of blackjack because he hit with 20.

And I'm only writing about it so I can post this.

5. The great Chris "Mad Dog" Russo had one of his vintage rants during his Monday SiriusXM radio show in which he was very, very unhappy that "Leonard" DiCaprio sat in a suite for Sunday's Niners-Rams game.

6. This week's SI Media Podcast is a mega episode with three guests: WWE superstar Roman Reigns, Fox Sports' Joe Buck and CBS Sports' Jim Nantz.

You can listen to the podcast below or download it on Apple, Spotify and Stitcher.

You can also watch the SI Media Podcast on YouTube.

7. RANDOM VIDEO OF THE DAY: I meant to write about this yesterday, but totally forgot, so forgive me. The best tweet of the entire weekend came from singer James Blunt, who weighed in on the recent trend of artists asking Spotify to pull their music because they didn't want to be on the same platform as podcaster/COVID-19 misinformation spreader Joe Rogan.

That's was just beautiful.

Be sure to catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts and check out the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina on Apple, Spotify or Stitcher. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter and Instagram.

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Jimmy Traina
JIMMY TRAINA

Jimmy Traina is a staff writer and podcast host for Sports Illustrated. A 20-year veteran in the industry, he’s been covering the sports media landscape for seven years and writes a daily column, Traina Thoughts. Traina has hosted the Sports Illustrated Media Podcast since 2018, a show known for interviews with some of the most important and powerful people in sports media. He also was the creator and writer of SI’s Hot Clicks feature from 2007 to '13.

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