The big story entering Week 9 of the 2015 National Football League regular season was the release of the pictures of Greg Hardy’s assault of ex-girlfriend Nicole Holder released by Deadspin and the subsequent statement of Dallas Cowboys owner and general manager Jerry Jones supporting him.
With NBC airing tonight’s Cowboys game in Arlington, TX against the Philadelphia Eagles, the network could do two things, ignore the story and broadcast the game or approach it head-on with Sunday Night Football host Bob Costas and analyst Cris Collinsworth. During the Football Night in America pregame, Costas did call Hardy “a bad guy who happens to be a good football player,” but Costas said while the NFL has messed up in prior domestic violence cases, he said in this case, Commissioner Roger Goodell tried to get it right with Hardy.
Al Michaels and Cris Collinsworth briefly discussed Hardy before the kickoff with Collinsworth saying that Hardy was a big part of the game and that “there’s a human element to this,” noting that he and Michaels would do their job in calling the game and were uncomfortable with the pictures, but if commentary was called for, they would do it.
Update, July 2021: This clip has been taken down.
No word if there will be any halftime commentary on Hardy, but it appears this will cover it from NBC’s end for now.
[Costas video courtesy of NBC/Collinsworth video courtesy of RN’s Funhouse]
