By Bruce Allen, Patriots Daily Staff
In some ways, the media coverage of last night’s game mirrored the sloppy product on the field.
We won’t even get into Randy Cross turning Patriot Place into a phallic symbol.
- Much of the pregame radio talk focused around some of the players who needed to make an impression. Benjamin Watson and Laurence Maroney were the obvious choices, with the talk coming down to whether the Patriots would be able to just cut ties with former first round picks if it came down to it. Later talk included Brett Favre’s return to the NFL with the Vikings.
- In the TV telecast, Criqui again had a few issues, flipping the teams around “Wilfork’s Bengals teammates absolutely love him” and making some other similar type statements. It’s the preseason for announcers too, I guess.
- Steve Burton once again proved he is the king of unintentional comedy. Or is it just awkwardness? When talking with the two $1 million winners of the new Patriots Instant Scratch Ticket from the Massachusetts State Lottery, Burton felt the need to rub himself on each of them. For luck, you know.
- I didn’t check out more than a minute or two, but it appeared that the NFL Network reply had the Cincinnati announcers. Did anyone watch this? Anything of note from that telecast?
This isn’t exactly from the game coverage, but in the show prior to the Pregame show on 98.5 FM, host Michael Felger offered an interesting theory on why the Patriots included Mike Vrabel in the Matt Cassel trade. His theory is that perhaps the Patriots were going to cut Vrabel this offseason, but feared that he would be immediately scooped up by Eric Mangini and the Browns, or by division rivals New York or Miami or perhaps even by the Steelers, Vrabel’s first team. They asked KC to take him off their hands, and as a result, the price for Cassel went down a bit, since the Chiefs were doing the Patriots a favor.
I’m not saying the theory has any basis in fact, but it’s something different that what we’ve heard before. At least from what I’ve heard before.
By the way, Stripe Hype has posted their Q&A with Pats Daily.
What did you see/hear last night that caught your attention?
“What did you see/hear last night that caught your attention?”
The same thing that catches my attention every practice game: Criqui and Cross suck, and the production is barely above local cable channel coverage of high school games. I gotta start watching these things with the sound turned down.
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Bruce, anything on the radio production side of things. Are Gil & Gino still “cutting it” ?
I wasn’t able to catch it last night, but I with TiVo & best of XM at home, I can usally sync the TV & radio broadcasts on Sat radio if I dont like the TV announcers.
I said the same thing to my wife when I saw Cross’s awful attempt to show Patriot Place in the form of a phallic design ! Why would a TV director want to show Patriot Place in the dark ?????…. oh wait, it is a Kraft TV production for the pre-season affiliates….. 🙂
Chris
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The Cincy guys did a fair job, other than confusing their own team with New Orleans – which did make me wonder which team they were really rooting for…
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