Rodney Harrison Calling Zach Wilson Garbage In Chris Jones Interview: Wrighster Or Wrong?

We need to talk about Rodney Harrison’s extremely unprofessional post-game interview with Chris Jones.

Frankly, this shocked me.

As the NFL has more and more broadcast partners each year, an increasing number of former players and coaches are getting opportunities to be part of pre-game, post-game or broadcast teams.

I was in the cabin. I have done every type of analysis there is, and I know that when that red light comes on, there can be traps and temptations to convey to the public a message that the audience is not ready to digest.

Rodney Harrison though? He shouldn’t be that guy. He has been a part of NBC’s news for fifteen years. And NBC is supposed to be a classy channel, serving football to morally upright crowds who spend the rest of their football viewing hours at church or with their families.

So what happened? Let’s get into it.

The Kansas City Chiefs defeated the New York Jets 23-20 in front of Taylor Swift.

I’m not sure if you caught one of the 500 mentions of him being at the game.

And Chiefs linebacker Chris Jones, who sacked Zach Wilson in the win, was invited to the booth to talk with Harrison and Tony Dungy.

Harrison asked Jones: Was Zach better than you expected him to be on tape tonight? And you can be honest.

Jones responded: Honestly, to be completely honest, we knew it was going to be a war. It continues to get better every week. Maintains leadership on weekdays and weekends

At this point things got out of hand, Harrison interrupted and called Zach Wilson “trash” and when Jones stepped back and said “Zach Wilson is special” Harrison ended the conversation disagreeing and said “I think he had a special night.” But I don’t think he’s ‘special’.’

Damn Rodney.

Look, no one thinks Zach Wilson is tearing up the league here. This season he was replaced by Aaron Rodgers. The Jets knew Wilson wasn’t ready to be the guy for 2023, but he pitched well enough to keep the Jets within striking distance against the Super Bowl champions. So was it really time to call this guy “trash”?

And if you’re going to call a player trash, why bother having Chris Jones agree with you? You have a platform. Call the man garbage in his spare time.

You wasted a moment with one of the best defenders in the game, someone who has earned the right to talk about HIS team and what they do to stay at the top, to bring negativity to the set and embarrass yourself in front of America.

Now, to Harrison’s credit, he did apparently reach out and apologize for his comments, but I’m more interested in how we got to this point. Everyone has shots that are too hot for broadcast TV, and some channels have created an entire sports talk economy to have a place for those shots. If Rodney Harrison wants to get off his NBC desk and do the podcast tour or get on the radio with me and shred it, all is well.

But we can’t allow people who have reached the top of publishing to look into these hot streets and try to have one foot in both worlds. And we certainly can’t have people in that role trapping the game’s best athletes and dragging them into a drama they never wanted to be a part of.

Let that sink in.