Scott Zolak, the current New England Patriots’ radio analyst on Boston’s 98.5 The Sports Hub and former quarterback for that team (from 1991-98), attracted a whole lot of attention earlier this week for his comments on that station from practice. There, Zolak (seen above) criticized Patriots’ quarterback Cam Newton and said playing rap music in practice was “distracting” for Newton. After days of criticism, Zolak has now apologized.
On Thursday, Zolak said “I’d turn off the rap music first of all, because I think it’s distracting for Cam here. Because in between every throw he’s dancing. He makes a throw and then [dances].” That led to days of criticism for Zolak, and to a lot of people pointing out how much better Newton’s career has been than Zolak’s was (Zolak started seven games and appeared in 55 from 1992-99 with the Patriots and Dolphins (that last year), completing 50 percent of his passes and throwing for 1,314 career yards and eight touchdowns with seven interceptions). And, days later, Zolak finally apologized on air ahead of the Patriots’ final preseason game Sunday:
Here are Zolak's full comments from today: pic.twitter.com/wbaCF2L0NY
— Zack Cox (@zm_cox) August 29, 2021
Zolak’s reasoning in there for his delayed apology is that he wanted to do it on air, but Friday was an off day and Saturday was a travel day. That’s somewhat logical. But it feels like with the attention this got, he could have called in to another show to get his apology on the record, or he could have just posted an apology to Twitter before this and then still apologized on-air Sunday; either of those approaches might have shortened the lifecycle of this negative story. At any rate, Zolak’s now admitted he erred here with that particular comment.
[Zack Cox on Twitter; photo via The Boston Globe]
