Colin Cowherd insensitively named the recently deceased Dwayne Haskins as a quarterback who can’t win a Super Bowl and WFAN’s Boomer Esiason believes it warrants an apology.
On his FS1 show earlier this week, Cowherd ran through several lists of quarterbacks, finishing with “20 guys who are not getting to a Super Bowl, and certainly not winning it.” Included on the list was Dwayne Haskins, who passed away in 2022 after being fatally struck by a vehicle.
Later, WFAN’s morning show featuring Jerry Recco and Chris Lopresti, filling in for the vacationing Gregg Giannotti, played audio of Cowherd’s blunder for Esiason, and the former NFL MVP sounded disgusted.
“Oh come on,” Esiason said as soon as he heard Cowherd name Haskins. “Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?! Come on. Are you serious?”
Recco believed Cowherd did it on purpose for attention, citing the radio host’s frequent mistakes and the number of views the video was compiling on social media.
“You’re not paying a guy that much money to be that stupid,” Esiason said about Cowherd. “I’m sorry. You’re just not. That is not a setup…It shows a lack of dedication, I think. It’s just laziness.”
Cowherd does make a lot of mistakes, and there’s no question he attempts to provoke the audience with his sports opinions, but this one was not a made-for-TV blunder. The video that was garnering attention was put out by Funhouse, not The Herd or Fox Sports. If Cowherd wanted the attention, his own team would have promoted the clip.
On today’s show, Colin Cowherd mentioned Dwayne Haskins as one of the QBs who cannot win a Super Bowl.
This is factually correct, given that Haskins passed away 16 months ago. pic.twitter.com/L1PvtPLyY6
— Funhouse (@BackAftaThis) August 8, 2023
“I don’t watch it, and this is probably one of the reasons why,” Esiason said of Cowherd’s show. “How do you actually say the guy’s name who’s dead? How do you say that? First of all, that’s a TV show too, right? So they probably have like 35 people working on that show.”
This wasn’t a new list of quarterbacks who can’t win a Super Bowl, according to Cowherd. It was a compilation of all the quarterbacks Cowherd has deemed unable to win a Super Bowl during every NFL preseason since 2013, which is why Haskins was on the list. That doesn’t excuse Cowherd from focusing on the late Haskins by naming him during the segment. A quick apology would have sufficed, instead, Cowherd ignored the mistake.
“That shows a lack of professionalism, it shows a lack of dedication, and somebody let something slip and they’re led by a guy that doesn’t seem to really care when he makes mistakes because he’s made a 100 of them,” Esiason continued. “This one is an awful one…Hopefully, he apologized after the fact.”
When The Herd replayed the segment during the show’s third hour, they edited out any mention of Haskins, although Cowherd did not apologize for the insensitive gaffe.
[WFAN]
About Brandon Contes
Brandon Contes is a staff writer for Awful Announcing and The Comeback. He previously helped carve the sports vertical for Mediaite and spent more than three years with Barrett Sports Media. Send tips/comments/complaints to bcontes@thecomeback.com