Adam Schefter never doubted his report that Tom Brady was going to retire from the NFL, even as the Brady camp publicly denied his story for nearly three days.
On the latest edition of Bryan Curtis’ media podcast, Schefter talks about his Brady scoop and the subsequent pushback he received. The NFL’s most venerated reporter says he doesn’t regret getting ahead of Brady’s announcement.
“Our job is to be reporters,” he said. “There have been people that have complained, ‘Oh, you’re just getting information from teams. You’re doing it in advance.’ So I don’t understand. I’m supposed to be ahead of the teams, but then I’m supposed to wait for certain people? Certain people get exempt from the news? Which way is it? Our job is to report. Tom Brady is the greatest football ever who’s ever been. If you knew that the greatest football player who ever played wasn’t playing again, I’m sure a lot of reporters would just sit back and say, ‘You know what? I’m just going to sit back. Thank you for letting me know, I’ll let Tom announce that when he’s ready.’”
Schefter and Jeff Darlington published their story on Saturday afternoon, only for Brady’s people to immediately doubt their reporting. While Schefter says the reaction was surprising, he never doubted his process.
“I wasn’t expecting that that day. Jeff and I worked hard on the story, we had the story, we felt like we knew the story,” he said. “I think we were taken aback by all of that, like, ‘What? OK.’ Again, we knew what we had done. We knew the process we went there. We felt good about that.”
Still, there’s always the possibility that stories can flip. Sometimes athletes and teams change their plans as a reaction to media reports. For example, Schefter says the Texans appeared to be hiring Josh McCown for their head coaching vacancy, but then Brian Flores filed his racial discrimination lawsuit.
Houston wound up hiring Lovie Smith.
Until Brady announced his own retirement, Schefter believed there was a slight chance he could change his mind.
“I’m not saying they had changed, or were going to, but it’s a thought. ‘Will this change the dynamics?,’” Schefter said. “We reported we believed he was retiring. We believed it to be soon. Does he say, ‘You know what? I’m going to retire on my time.’ You don’t know how that’s going to alter the dynamics of the equation any time with any story, whether it’s Tom Brady or the Brady Brunch.”
Of course, Schefter was vindicated after needlessly getting gaslighted. With Brady already teasing his possible return, there will undoubtedly be more stories to come.