In my experience being mic'd up, they’ve always done a good job respecting the player. But I thought the manner in which Sam Darnold was exposed Monday night was unfair.
There's a common understanding that the network should take care of you and paint you in a good light. But they embarrassed him by taking his comment about "seeing ghosts" of out context and running with it.
"Seeing ghosts" actually is a common term that a lot of players use, especially quarterbacks.
You see it constantly: Sometimes quarterbacks feel something in the pocket that might not be there, or they think somebody’s coming from behind. You see them step up dramatically or maybe make a sudden movement, and they're thinking, "Oh gosh, my mind was telling me something was coming." And you use it like, "Oh man, I’m seeing ghosts."
I’ve used the term before, for sure. But I wasn’t mic’d up when it happened, so I didn’t have to answer any questions about it.
I've been mic'd up several times in my career. Usually it's someone from the media department who asks you: “Hey, the NFL wants to mic you up for the game." Most of the time, you just say, “All right, cool.”
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And then you don’t even acknowledge it, because they put a little speaker on the inside of your pad that you can’t even tell is there. Once you get into the game, you’re more worried about getting hit by a 300-pounder than a little pack or microphone underneath your pad.
When your teammates come up to you during pregame or on the sidelines and you have that natural banter, that's when you let them know, “Hey, I’m mic’d up today. Watch what you say.”
But again, there’s usually a trust factor between the mic'd up player and the network that they’re going to take care of you and not make you look like a fool.
You’re doing them a solid by going out there mic’d up, and the viewer gets that extra raw footage: how it sounds in the huddle, how a quarterback makes his calls, how a big hit sounds or what's said in a touchdown celebration.
And sometimes it's raw.
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In one of my mic'd up games, we were in a two-minute drill, and I remember screaming at my offensive linemen to get on the ball, probably using all sorts of explicit language. It’s just the excitement and energy of the game in the moment when you get going.
But again, you’re hoping the network is going to protect your integrity by not trying to blow up your spot. And I haven't gone through anything to the extreme of what Darnold went through Monday night, where they exposed him while he's trying to make adjustments on the sideline.
There’s no benefit to the player in that sense, and I don’t think it was right the way they portrayed him or the circumstances he was in.
Editor's note: Matt Cassel had a 14-year NFL career that included four seasons with the New England Patriots (2005-2008). He's joining the NBC Sports Boston team for this season. You can find him on game days as part of our Pregame Live and Postgame Live coverage, as well as every week on Tom E. Curran’s Patriots Talk podcast and NBCSportsBoston.com.
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