ESPN's 'First Take' Got Duped In Embarrassing Fashion Tuesday
The fact-checkers at ESPN's First Take might have a scolding coming their way after the way the show was apparently duped on Tuesday morning.
While covering the Dallas Cowboys this morning, First Take host Molly Qerim shared a clip from practice of Cowboys wide receiver George Pickens receiving a deep bomb from quarterback Dak Prescott in training camp camp.
There's only one problem. Actually, there are at least several problems.
That clip is of Brandin Cooks, not George Pickens.
The Cowboys have not had a practice yet.
The clip is from two years ago.
First Take were the victims of a troll job from Cowboys fan @FergSZN, who decided to troll some of his own fans by calling it a bomb from Dak to Pickens.
"First play of Cowboys Training Camp is a Dak Prescott BOMB to George Pickens," they wrote on X yesterday morning.
As much as people wanted to criticize the X user for tricking them, many more got on ESPN's case for not doing their research:
"A joke of a network. Lazy producers didn't even check to see who took the video and when and Molly doesn't have any sense to realize it's wrong as she reads it," one user wrote on X.
"Congrats to @espn for airing old video from a random Twitter account and calling it the first day of Training Camp. Beyond lazy," wrote another.
"Reason 1001 to never watch that show and anything like it," a third wrote.
"WOW. Who checks socials for ESPN? This is shameful lol."
"But when I tell y'all these sports media people are frauds with mics and production studios then I'm the haters. Them airing this on National TV is crazy. Nobody knew this was an old clip and that it wasn't George Pickens? I watched the clip yesterday and could tell it wasn't him."
"Jesus Christ!! This is why I don't watch ESPN anymore except for games. No research anymore. Just bs."
"Throw this in the garbage and restart everything, the fact we have 'journalists' not knowing when training camp starts nor than George Pickens isn't 5'10 is insane, they're genuinely ruining others opportunities who can actually bring sports journalism back
It's a bad look. That's for sure.ESPN's 'First Take' Got Duped In Embarrassing Fashion Tuesday first appeared on The Spun on Jul 22, 2025
This story was originally reported by The Spun on Jul 22, 2025, where it first appeared.
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