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Nick Wright Offers NFL Beat Writers Advice After Justin Fields Cart Ride

The podcast host stresses the importance of precise language.

Kyle Koster

Nick Wright reacts to Justin Fields news.
Nick Wright reacts to Justin Fields news. / What's Right With Nick Wright on X
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Thursday provided an interesting look at the state of NFL media after New York Jets quarterback Justin Fields left training camp with an injury. Several reporters on-site shared news of Fields being carted off the field after hurting his leg. The worst was feared and perhaps some overreacted to the incident considering Fields is already back on the gridiron a day later.

So, what happened? Well, the same thing that always happens as everyone reacts to the very first thing and the narrative is spiraling out of control before subsequent updates completely change things.

The toothpaste is out of the tube when it comes to asking consumers to hold their horses and wait for more information when something happens. And, when the New York Jets quarterback suffers what initially is believed to be a significant injury, that's going to be the biggest story in sports when it's late-July.

But Nick Wright offered some helpful advice to reporters doing the work of informing the public when speaking on his podcast What's Wright with Nick Wright this week.

"NFL beat writers," Wright started. "We need precise language. We need the difference between carted off and rose a cart off ... Carted off connotates season over, rode a cart off is very different."

He's not wrong. It would be helpful to have the most accurate picture of what happened. On the other hand, these beat reporters are sweating it out on the hot sun watching practice and are in a race against their peers to get attention when anything interesting happens. There is no rule that the public has to rush to immediately imagine Fields is out for the season and bring up the Jets trading for Kirk Cousins to fix it, but that's what's going to happen.

The important thing here is that Fields appears to be fine and his status for Week 1 is the same as it was before the cart ride in question.

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Kyle Koster
KYLE KOSTER

Kyle Koster is an assistant managing editor at Sports Illustrated covering the intersection of sports and media. He was formerly the editor in chief of The Big Lead, where he worked from 2011 to '24. Koster also did turns at the Chicago Sun-Times, where he created the Sports Pros(e) blog, and at Woven Digital.

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