We have seen countless NFL players transition into media roles after their playing days are done, which offers them a different perspective on how to cover the sport. And former NFL defensive lineman Chris Long called out one key factor that many media members often times overlook.
Long played 11 seasons in the league with varying success on several different teams. With this, he knows that several different factors go into the success a player has in any given year.
The NFL veteran turned football podcaster appeared on the This is Football podcast with Kevin Clark, where he was asked by Clark what the one thing he wished other media members understood about football.
Long responded by saying that “context matters” when breaking down each game every week that helps better describe what is happening on the field in each game.
“Context matters,” said Long. “It matters in every situation for every player. And people know that anyways, and they power right through it. With quarterbacks, it is the easiest one. Depending on what offense you are in you can look totally different. Look at what Dave Canales has done with Baker Mayfield this year. If you want to make a bold black-and-white statement about the Buccaneers this morning, it is hard to do that because they played Joe Barry.”
I asked Chris Long what he wishes the football media thought about more. His answer should be required watching for all of us who fires off takes. "Context matters. It matters in every situation and for every player. People know that but they still power right through it." pic.twitter.com/znj0qrGwJe
— Kevin Clark (@bykevinclark) December 19, 2023
Long then brought up another aspect that plagued him throughout his playing career. He stated that many NFL media members break down defensive players based on sacks, when in reality there are more factors that go beyond the traditional stat sheet than who ends up getting the sack on any given play defensively.
“As a defensive lineman, I always got pissed off because they always boiled everything down to a sack. You can play the game of your life and have five or six pressures and then you have the crowd that says quarterback pressures aren’t a real stat. If they aren’t a real stat, why are the biggest games every Sunday decided by pressure? There is all types of context that go into things. The point is, people want to make things black and white. People like boiling things down to simple answers. It’s never that simple.”
This is the positive aspect of more and more former NFL players going into media roles after their playing days are done. They understand how the game works and that there are many factors that go into a player’s performance each and every week.
Those who didn’t play the game at the highest level can certainly learn a thing or two from someone like Chris Long regarding how to cover NFL players.
[Kevin Clark on Twitter/X, Photo Credit: Omaha Productions]
