ESPN Sunday NFL Countdown Analysts Keyshawn Johnson, Cris Carter had an excellent exchange on the pathetic Friday press conference that Roger Goodell gave. This complements the hot take Troy Aikman had this morning. He similarly shredded Goodell; and deservedly so.
Roger Goodell gave a terrible performance at the presser and it was rightfully ripped by media, NFL fans and some NFL players. That criticism is especially well deserved when you consider that Goodell was AWOL for a long time. Roger Goodell had lots of time to prepare for this event, and he bombed.
He only seemed to care about damage control and saving his brand. He never conveyed anything tangible about actually making some real positive changes. Instead Goodell threw out a bunch of bland corporatespeak and meaningless platitudes. He didn’t speak from the heart and failed to deliver anything substantive. The NFL commish only delivered legalese and vanilla soundbites.
Here’s what the ESPN pundits said about Friday’s Roger Goodell press conference this morning on ESPN Sunday NFL Countdown
Jackson: “I thought it lacked substance. I thought that it was a lot of what I had expected. I knew that the questions that were going to come were going to be very difficult. Unanswerable when you have handled the situation as ineptly as it had been handled up to that point. So, we heard a lot of – and you know, it’s always nice to hear somebody say I made a mistake and I’m sorry, but I didn’t think that there was any substance as to what we are going to really do going forward to change what happened over the course of the last few weeks and what happened over the course of the last few weeks is not over yet, and he knows that.”
Johnson: “I wasn’t satisfied. To me it was like a dance show. Felt like I was looking at a heavy politician, reading notes and a script that was given. It was very – he was like robotic. This is what you say, stay to the script. I think when you look at that and we’re all looking for answers – there were some answers, there yeah – we’re going to do some things, we’re going to have some things in place by the time we get to the Super Bowl, but by the time you get to the Super Bowl, how many other problems are going to come up?”
More from Jackson: “I do think that the women who are now – Lisa Friel and company – the women who are in the league office, I think that I already see their influence, because the advice he got up until the press conference this week has been definitively better than the advice he got before that.”
Carter: “I like the apology, but I’d like to see a little more emotion about all the people that we had hurt being associated with the National Football League the last couple weeks. I didn’t see any empathy for the victims.”
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