Gil Brandt didn’t wake up knowing he was going to insult a dead man within hours of Dwayne Haskins’ death because he probably found out about the horrific accident that took the life of a young man on Twitter like the rest of us. Instead of trying to find something respectful or worthwhile to say about a player whose pro career hadn’t lined up with where he was drafted, Brandt decided he was going to deliver a take that even for the internet was pretty shocking.
If you need audio proof that an NFL analyst lacks the capacity for empathy, you can listen to him in the tweet below say things like Haskins “was living to be dead” and “Maybe if he stayed in school a year he wouldn’t do silly things [like] jogging on a highway.”
Evaluating this tragedy like it’s a seven-step drop is akin to attending a funeral and critiquing the eulogy. Brandt is 90 years old, so he’s lived long enough and probably attended enough wakes to know how to act like a human fucking being when a person dies.
You’re supposed to gain wisdom with age, not lose all sense of decorum. Having Brandt fill the barren waste land that is the Saturday morning slot on Sirius is a good idea until you remember that the internet exists and anything a dinosaur says to fill air time can and will be used against him.
Brandt works for the NFL, for now, and it’s a terrible look for a league constantly accused of treating its players like commodities, which happened again after Brandt went viral. (Don’t worry, Gil, going viral isn’t a sinus infection.)
And he said this after the league source operating Adam Schefter’s Twitter account put Haskins’ on-field struggles before his death in the news-breaking announcement. That tweet has since been deleted because an intern who’s still in J school could’ve flagged it as in poor taste.
The number of quarterbacks drafted in the first round who don’t pan out is innumerable. It’s the hardest job in sports, and from what Mike Tomlin said about Haskins, he was committed to working hard at his craft and also in the community.
What Brandt thought of Haskins’ decision to leave Ohio State, his tenure at Washington, or his on-field performance doesn’t matter anymore. The guy is dead. Give him and his grieving family a fucking break.
Leave your hot take in the medicine cabinet next to those pills you clearly forgot to ingest.
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