This week’s matchup between the Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers on Thursday Night Football possesses plenty of storylines. One of them, however, is not Nick Chubb’s return to Pittsburgh, where he suffered a catastrophic knee injury last season.
That’s because the game in question will be taking place in Cleveland. Nevertheless, that small detail was seemingly overlooked by the league’s very own website, which published a story regarding Chubb’s triumphant return to the Steel City on Tuesday night.
As noted by Warren Sharp, the story — published under the headline “Browns’ Nick Chubb unsurprisingly sees return to Pittsburgh where he suffered knee injury as ‘normal game'” — even featured quotes attempting to support the inaccurate premise.
the fact it is https://t.co/XHceuPBiBj with the oversight 😂
they didn’t just get the host reversed, they wrote an entire article on the premise… with a player interview and quoteshttps://t.co/gcEgWRTocM pic.twitter.com/aSlcyQwt9T
— Warren Sharp (@SharpFootball) November 20, 2024
“This won’t be just any old game in Pittsburgh for Nick Chubb on Thursday night, but he’s treating it as such,” the article read. “Four hundred 30 days after ripping his knee to shreds in a prime-time game against the host Pittsburgh Steelers, the Cleveland Browns running back will be back at Acrisure Stadium on Thursday night.”
The story in question was initially published just after 9 p.m. ET time on Tuesday night and remained active on the NFL’s official website until being pulled down at some point on Wednesday morning after Sharp called attention to it (you can find an archived version here). Some even went as far as to speculate that the story had been produced via AI following NFL Media’s recent layoffs, although there doesn’t appear to any evidence to support such claims.
Ultimately, mistakes happen — even if this was an especially egregious one for the NFL’s own website. And if nothing else, publishing an inaccurate story like this one calls into question NFL Media’s editorial process, especially considering the larger context of the league’s recent layoffs.
