Most often, whenever Stephen A. Smith sparks up his signature burn, it is in reaction to cannabis-specific situations in the sports world: a positive test, an arrest, news of that nature. But the topic du jour on June 13 so inflated ESPN’s most prominent gasbag that he made an exception, puffing on First Take, “You gonna try to tell me a dude that you’ve never even played a preseason game with is more accurate than Patrick Mahomes? If you are really, really serious about that, I’m sorry, I’m gonna say this on national television: Stay off the weeeeeeeeeeed-uh.”
In a scornful, singsong tone, Smith stretched out the last word for 4.78 seconds—or, about half a second longer than it takes the man who inspired the rant to run a 40-yard dash. Yet for all of Tyreek Hill’s supersonic speed, it’s possible that the Dolphins receiver known as Cheetah has never sprinted anywhere faster than the offseason’s mad scramble to defend his new quarterback. “Obviously, I’m gonna go with [Mahomes] as the strongest arm,” Hill declared on his nascent podcast, It Needed to Be Said. “But as far as accuracy-wise, I’m going with Tua all day.”
To no one’s surprise, talking heads starved for summer content swiftly spat out takes. In addition to spinning through the ESPN car wash, Hill’s comments received dedicated segments on NBC Sports Radio’s ProFootballTalk (14 minutes), FS1’s Skip and Shannon: Undisputed (12) and, in a rare moment of restraint for the punter turned perpetually tank-topped YouTuber, merely seven minutes on the Pat McAfee Show. The conclusions ranged from half-baked jokes about Hill being high to more charitable readings of the quote’s intentions.
