Adam Schefter defended his Greg Hardy interview Wednesday, but it’s what he said after the sit-down with the controversial NFL player that he’d like to do over.
Schefter interviewed Hardy earlier this week about the free-agent defensive end’s troubled past, most notably a 2014 incident with his then-girlfriend in which he allegedly hit the woman. The photographs tell a haunting tale, though Hardy insisted in his interview with Schefter that he’s never put his hands on a woman.
Not many people bought Hardy’s claims. Schefter later appeared on “The Dan Patrick Show” and refused to comment on whether he believed Hardy, but he did say this, which raised plenty of eyebrows.
“I’ll say this, I’ll say this to you,” the ESPN NFL reporter told Patrick. “I went in there with the idea that everybody had, that this guy’s a monster, OK? I went in there thinking that this is one of the scariest people in the NFL. And I came out of there with a very different feeling about him. I came out of there with a feeling that this is a guy who has managed to say the wrong things at the wrong times, has not always made the right decisions. But I found him to be a changed kind of guy, a guy that I think realizes he did make a mistake, could have handled things differently in regards to that incident.”
After a couple of days of reflection — in addition to some loud criticism — Schefter admits that probably wasn’t the best thing to say.
“That was a mistake on my part,” Schefter said Wednesday in an interview with WEEI Radio. “But I have no regrets about the interview or the questions we asked. None.”
Schefter again refused to give any sort of concrete answer when asked about the allegations against Hardy.
“I honestly didn’t go in there to form an opinion of whether he did or didn’t hit her,” Schefter said on WEEI. “I wasn’t there.”
The whole thing has caused a bit of a stir within ESPN. Michelle Beadle blasted Schefter with a tweet Tuesday and said on “SportsNation” that the situation felt “dirty.”
Thumbnail photo via Timothy T. Ludwig/USA TODAY Sports Images
