How desperate is ESPN and First Take to talk about the Dallas Cowboys? Desperate enough that they will show videos of George Pickens catching touchdowns in training camp before training camp even starts.
Jerry Jones’ stunning press conference about the Micah Parsons contract situation was always going to be easy fodder for the Cowboys-obsessed ESPN morning shows. But at the end of a debate about Parsons, First Take showed a training camp highlight of Dak Prescott appearing to throw a long touchdown pass to new wide receiver George Pickens.
Except… training camp for the Cowboys in Oxnard, California didn’t even start until today at 11:45 a.m. PT well after First Take was off the air for the day. So it appears that First Take showed an old clip of Cowboys training camp that they found online and thought was new.
Later on in the program, host Molly Qerim apologized for showing the falsely attributed video.
First Take had a bit of a slip up this morning, claiming George Pickens was on the receiving end of this touchdown pass by Dak Prescott during training camp. He was not 😬
Molly Qerim issued a correction later in the show. pic.twitter.com/syyf2JEmor
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) July 22, 2025
“Welcome back to First Take. Quick cleanup on our part. Earlier we showed video that we identified as George Pickens at Cowboys training camp. It was not George, so we apologize on that mistake,” Qerim said.
That doesn’t quite get to the depth of the cleanup given Cowboys training camp hadn’t even started yet at airtime and a quick Google search of the Cowboys training camp schedule would have quickly factchecked that.
So how did ESPN get the video? It is credited to a fan/troll account @FergSZN on X, who was in full celebration mode after their tweet fooled ESPN.
THEY JUST APOLOGIZED FOR SHOWING MY TWEET LMAO pic.twitter.com/p0yL9WCvHp
— FergSZN (@FergSZN) July 22, 2025
But just a few quick seconds of research would have easily debunked this. The original tweet was from yesterday, but even that is a shared video from Cowboys media personality Kyle Youmans. The original source is a 2023 training camp clip of Brandin Cooks, who now plays for the New Orleans Saints.
Dak Prescott hits Brandin Cooks on a DEEP BALL for a huge gain. Much to the delight of @IamSTANBACK, who loved the route and the throw. #CowboysCamp pic.twitter.com/YEfEDKrehj
— Kyle Youmans (@Kyle_Youmans) July 31, 2023
ESPN has round the clock coverage of the Dallas Cowboys, so quickly running with on random videos from random social media users on national television probably isn’t advisable. But credit to ESPN for admitting the mistake. If this were the White House press office, they probably would have doubled down that it was really George Pickens.
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