ESPN forgot to censor f-bomb from Cowboys clip on ‘SportsCenter’: ‘Unintentional mistake.’

If Pat McAfee isn’t allowed to drop f-bombs on ESPN, no one is allowed to drop f-bombs on ESPN, and that includes DeMarcus Lawrence.

Monday morning, SportsCenter welcomed Ed Werder to give his Dallas Cowboys report after they beat the Philadelphia Eagles on Sunday Night Football. During the report, Werder noted Dallas ended Philly’s streak of 94 consecutive game where they scored at least one offensive touchdown. “The gameplan was simple and brutally efficient,” Werder said of the Cowboys defense before throwing the report to a highlight package that led off with DeMarcus Lawrence speaking to reporters.

Whoops. That probably wasn’t supposed to be in there pic.twitter.com/f3rCaepPeF

— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) December 11, 2023

“Hit a motherf***er in the face,” Lawrence said to describe that simple gameplan. “Over and over and over and over again. Until they quit. And when they quit, hit em again!”

Whoops! Someone was probably supposed to hide that with a beep. After Werder’s report and a commercial break, SportsCenter anchor Ryan Smith closed the show by apologizing for the “unintentional mistake.”

“Wanna quickly apologize for some sound we aired a couple moments ago from that Cowboys piece,” Smith said. “Some foul language was used. So, I just want to say, apologies for that on our behalf. Unintentional mistake there.”

Pro athletes are known to utter the occasional bad word and hot mic f-bombs happen, so no one should be stunned to hear Lawrence drop one. But this slip was made a little more egregious by the fact that it was part of a prepared highlight package. There’s probably a pretty standard protocol in place for ESPN to edit f-bombs out of highlights and clips.

Where’s The Pat McAfee Show dump button when you need it? ESPN airs McAfee’s weekday show on a delay, giving them the ability to dump any accidental f-bombs, but the Worldwide Leader doesn’t usually have to worry about SportsCenter being its problem child.  The 7 a.m. ET SportsCenter audience probably doesn’t care too much about the f-bomb, but we’ll keep writing about it until ESPN decides to just start letting them fly.

[ESPN]