Michael Irvin put on one hell of a show on First Take Tuesday morning. While The Playmaker talked and shouted for nearly eleven consecutive minutes in celebration of the Dallas Cowboys’ Monday Night Football victory, Keyshawn Johnson sat silently watching with Stephen A. Smith and Molly Querim. On Wednesday morning, Johnson described the experience for the Keyshawn, JWill and Max audience.
The producers played 90 seconds of highlights for the audience. They included Irvin shouting things like “The Cowboys are 2-0 under Cooper Rush. The season is not over! The season just started!” and “Did you know the number eight stands for new beginnings? That’s why the number 88 is so special. God knows I needed so many new beginnings and 88s can take a new beginning!”.
“That was a short clip though,” Keyshawn Johnson said coming out of the audio. “Obviously we couldn’t play it all. That went for ten minutes it felt like, man.”
Johnson was laughing to the point of tears at points at times on the First Take set. He told his ESPN Radio colleagues what he saw that set him off.
“He was literally sweating,” he said of Michael Irvin. “They had to bring out a beach towel. Felt like I was in church, man.”
Jay Williams went with the analogy. He said that he was surprised Keyshawn Johnson “didn’t stand up and felt the Holy Ghost.”
Johnson compared Irvin’s delivery to “a little crack version of TD Jakes”. He also added that he hopes people noticed that Irvin isn’t just a great performer, but an astute analyst.
“What I would say is Irvin had some great points. They might have gotten lost in the performance so to speak.”
