The Kansas City Chiefs beat the New York Jets, 23-20, on Sunday Night Football. After the game Chris Jones joined Rodney Harrison, Jac Collinsworth and Tony Dungy on NBC / Peacock's traveling desk to talk about the game. It was mostly a normal postgame show interview except for two awkward moments where Harrison tried really hard to get Jones to join the loud chorus of people trashing Zach Wilson.
(You can see the exchanges at the 2:27 and 6:58 marks.)
Harrison first brought up the Jets quarterback by saying, "Was Zach better tonight than what you anticipated, watching him on tape? You can be honest." When Jones began answering by saying, "Honestly?" Harrison jumped back in with "Yeah!" Jones then gave a standard, cliched answer with Harrison staring back at him, holding in a laugh.
As Jones started to wind down Harrison again interjected. "But watching that tape, man, you gotta look at this dude and say oh he is garbage! We should really tear him apart, but tonight he came out and played extremely well against you guys."
Jones did not take the bait and continued to talk up the young quarterback that had just given the defending Super Bowl champions pretty much all they could handle in a nationally televised game. The conversation moved on, but Jones called Wilson "special" a few minutes later and Harrison again went after him.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait. Did you say Zach Wilson is special? I think he had a special night, but I don't think he's special." This time Dungy and Collinsworth chuckled and Jones again defended Wilson.
This was pretty awkward. Cris Collinsworth went way over the top pumping up Wilson throughout the broadcast. To then have Harrison go right back to breaking him down after he actually played pretty well was weird. He made a key turnover and the Jets lost, but there's a case to be made that he outplayed Patrick Mahomes on Sunday. No, really.
It's unclear if Jones really thinks Wilson is special or can be special, but he was trying to be a good sport about it and there was really no reason to try and get him to be a dick for no reason. It will be interesting to see how the narrative around Wilson changes - or doesn't - this week because clearly some people aren't interested in giving him as much credit as they have shit when he plays well.
This article was originally published on thebiglead as Rodney Harrison Tried Really Hard to Get Chris Jones to Say Zach Wilson Sucks in Awkward Interview.