National Pundits Reveal True Colors After Buffalo Bills Win Over Baltimore Ravens

I don’t expect intellectual honesty from experts in American national professional soccer. Motivated primarily by their network’s incessant need to drive traffic at the expense of quality conversation, the NFL’s “analysts” are made up largely of entertainers who offer no substantial benefit to the conversation.

Platforms such as ESPN, Fox Sportsand others have a supply and demand problem: they want to fill 24 hours a day with outlets, but don’t have the roster of thoughtful commentators needed to fill those 24 hours with differentiated opinions and perspectives while still maintaining a semblance of intellectual honesty.

This reality came to the forefront of public consciousness following the Buffalo Bills’ 27-25 playoff victory over the Baltimore Ravens. Ryan Clark ESPN posted about Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson on X last night, tell him the loss “wasn’t your fault” and praise Jackson for showing up in the “most important moments.”

A year ago, after the AFC Divisional Playoffs, Clark and colleague Dan Orlovsky discussed the Kansas City Chiefs’ victory over the Buffalo Bills to advance to the AFC Championship Game. At that time, he remarked that Josh Allen was “still not the winner we always try to make him out to be” and was exasperated that people “keep making excuses for him.”

Clark said the NFL world is a week away from Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes going to multiple Super Bowls, Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow going to the Super Bowl and Lamar Jackson, at the Super Bowl (oops).

“When he does it, he does it” applied to Josh Allen then, but not to Lamar Jackson now. “What we never do,” Clark exclaimed during last season’s playoffs, “is go in here ‘oh my God, Lamar didn’t get help from anybody!’ Poor Lamar! Poor Lamar! No, it’s “Lamar must win”, “Lamar must find a way”.

Clark went on to say that Allen “played great but didn’t do enough.” When Orlovsky said he disagreed, Clark interjected, saying, “What’s the score!” He didn’t do enough! Wins are a quarterback stat until Lamar Jackson loses in the playoffs, at which point we apparently need context.

Among the reactions of the names visible in the sports comments, however, there were some pleasant surprises. Trey Wingo, formerly of ESPN and currently host of the podcast “Alternate Routes”, took issue with Josh Allen’s comments to Tracy Wolfson of CBS after the game where he said the team had heard all year that they had “no talent” and were “not good enough to finish.”

“Literally NO ONE said Buffalo had no talent,” exclaimed Wingo on X.

Bills Mafia kept the receipts.

Emmanuel Acho of Fox Sports proclaimed exactly that just a few months ago. As such, Wingo was inundated with the video below as proof that while NFL teams are notorious for concocting all kinds of nonsense in their quest to be perpetually shut out (cough, Bengals, cough), this particular account was not a fabrication:

Wingo, seeing the exact words of a national expert, had the exact response befitting someone trying to be honest with their views:

Additionally, NFL Network’s “Good Morning Football” got in on the action. When Kyle Brandt and Peter Schrager were discussing the Ravens sending the game into overtime with the two-point conversion that Mark Andrews dropped late in the game, Joe Miller of “Overreaction Sports Network” called them out on accurately that there were still over 90 seconds left and Buffalo still had two timeouts to use.

Given that Bills kicker Tyler Bass had made a 51-yard field goal earlier against Baltimore, the assumption that the game would have gone to overtime if the Ravens had converted on the two-point conversion is probably presumptuous.

Brandt replied:

What we see now after the Bills’ win over the Ravens is the difference between people who honestly try to be intellectually honest and people who don’t care. Take note.

What matters is not whether you are always right. No one is always right, especially in a sport as unpredictable as American football.

What matters is if you try to be consistent with the output when there is consistent input. It is worth noting people who provide content in good faith, whether we agree or not and whether they are right or not.

And people who blindly and illogically provide intellectually dishonest content should be called out. I don’t know if this will make them change or not (probably not), but it will certainly help reduce their impact on the general consumer.

…and that’s how the cookie crumbles. I’m Bruce Nolan with Buffalo Rumblings. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram @BruceExclusive and look for new episodes of “The Bruce Exclusive” every Thursday on Rumblings Cast Network – see more in my LinkTree!