The NFL preseason starting up creates a downright magical feeling for football fans, and coverage for games and highlights will look a little different this season across the board. Tom Brady joined Fox’s NFL Sunday lineup, Matt Ryan replaced exiting CBS analysts Phil Simms and Boomer Esiason, and Bill Belichick is at Inside the NFL, which now airs on The CW. ESPN also isn’t immune to changes, as the network has reportedly fired former QB Robert Griffin III, as well as NFL Countdown host Sam Ponder.
The decision to completely terminate Griffin is a surprising one, considering he’s in the middle of his current contract with ESPN. He was expecteand to return to the 2024 TV schedule in the same capacity, as he's often been viewed as having high value within the company. But the contract element is where arguably the most brutal alleged detail lies in this report from The Atlantic.
The impetus behind firing both Robert Griffin III and Sam Ponder came down to finances. The latter was going into the third year of a three-year agreement worth more than $3 million, while Griffin still had two years left to go in his five-year deal, and his was also in the seven-figure range.
Here’s the thing: ESPN is still going to honor the rest of the Heisman winner’s contract so that he’s still paid out what he’s owed. But it was apparently agreed that even though he was such a promising on-screen talent for the majority of his stint, his status within the company had apparently fallen far enough that they felt it was better to pay and keep him off television than to keep him employed.
At the time of writing, ESPN has not commented on the firings, though it's likely the motivating factors behind the terminations would not be discussed in full.
Robert Griffin III Shares A+ Reaction To Firing
While the network is currently keeping mum, Robert Griffin III took to X to share his reaction to the news in one of the most hilarious ways possible: a painfully relatable John Witherspoon quote from Friday.
pic.twitter.com/M1AilOwmq3August 15, 2024
Whether or not he spends the rest of the day toking up like Chris Tucker's Smokey remains to be seen.
It also remains to be seen what will happen next in the athlete's post-NFL career, and whether he'll be able to make a quick transition to Fox Sports, which previously attempted to court his talents, or another company with big ties to the world of football. It's possible there are contractual stipulations that would keep him from joining a competitor for a certain time period, but those details will presumably be made clearer at a later point.
RGIII has been a familiar face on ESPN when it comes to both professional and college football programming for the past three years. The former Offensive Rookie of the Year did make some questionable choices in the past year, with the most controversial being the time when he used a racial slur during a live Monday Night Countdown.
Griffin, who was right there with everyone else making jokes about Nick Cannon’s prolific fatherhood in 2022, also vacated the field during the midst of the Vrbo Fiesta Bowl broadcast in 2023 after learning that his wife was in labor. It was viewed at the time as a celebratory moment, but was still not exactly common behavior for anyone in the TV world.
Football fans still looking for a great deal on NFL Sunday Ticket should hit up Verizon, which is currently still offering a huge discount for its customers.
