Herm Edwards is 'Done!' Mad at Cowboys - Or at ESPN? WATCH
A fired-up Herm Edwards had no love for the Dallas Cowboys on Valentine's Day.
The former NFL player and coach, now an ESPN NFL analyst, perhaps had every reason to be in a cheery mood considering two of his former franchises, the Philadelphia Eagles (whom he repped on the field) and the Kansas City Chiefs (whose top headset he wore as head coach), met in Super Bowl LVII.
With amateur and professional observers alike already looking toward the 2023 season after Kansas City's 38-35 victory, Edwards couldn't believe that the Cowboys lingered as a topic of conversation on Tuesday's edition of "First Take," as they placed sixth in ESPN's early power rankings for the new year.
"I'm done!'' Edwards finally said, marching off the set.
Dallas' placement is perhaps fair ... only the Super Bowl combatants, the semifinalists from San Francisco and Cincinnati, and its fellow Divisional round loser Buffalo rank ahead of them ... but Edwards was annoyed that he seemed to be asked about the top six teams if only to stage a Cowboys conversation.
“We went all the way from one, not to five, but to six. Why?” Edwards asked. “We just have to talk about the Cowboys! They couldn’t make the top five, but they got to six! Now we’re going to talk about the top six teams. Are you kidding me? Really?
"It’s always about the Cowboys! We have to talk about these guys all the time?''
While one could easily make an argument that the 24-hour sports news cycle holds an unhealthy obsession with America's Team, a programmer would argue that it's partly justified by the Cowboys' continued popularity. Dallas games took up four of the top five slots on the list of the most-watched regular season games in 2022, with over 42 million viewers taking in their victorious Thanksgiving clash against the New York Giants.
That's not enough to convince Edwards of the necessity of Dallas-based discussions, arguing that perhaps time would be better spent talking about the seventh-ranked Los Angeles Chargers.
“Why do we have the Cowboys even in the conversation at six, why didn’t we just go seven and talk about the Chargers, too?" Edwards asked. "We had to stop at six, we had to talk about the Cowboys! We got the Cowboys, we got to talk about the Cowboys! I’m tired of the Cowboys!”
Alas for Edwards, his pleas appear to fall on the deaf ears: before the show signs off, co-analyst Keyshawn Johnson (himself a former Cowboy) says that he'd remove third-ranked San Francisco and place Dallas in the top five instead. The sign-off couldn't be better timed, as Edwards storms off his set, maybe in a tongue-in-cheek fashion. ... maybe not.
"Stop it!" Edwards tells Johnson. "I'm done!''
Geoff Magliocchetti is on Twitter @GeoffJMags
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