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Seth Payne: Mike Tannenbaum Did Not ‘Understand the Assignment’ During ‘First Take’ Appearance

During Friday’s edition of First Take on ESPN, the program asked a question to its panel about which quarterback they would start a football team with other than Patrick Mahomes. Mike Tannenbaum, NFL front office insider for ESPN, stated that he would take Green Bay Packers quarterback Jordan Love in this situation.

Tannenbaum had expressed a similar opinion on a podcast in the past, something that Sean Pendergast believes Stephen A. Smith had ostensibly heard before asking why he would not take Houston Texans quarterback C.J. Stroud instead. In his counterargument, Smith stated that Stroud is the third quarterback in the last 50 years to lead the NFL in passing yards per game and turnover ratio, along with the fact that he is younger and makes less money than Love.

After Pendergast played the audio on Monday’s edition of the Payne and Pendergast morning show on SportsRadio 610, he mentioned that ESPN NFL analyst Ryan Clark was a member of the panel as well and concurred with Smith’s opinion. In response, Tannenbaum brought up how the Packers eliminated the Dallas Cowboys from the NFL Playoffs, leading Smith to say much of that had to do with the performance of running back Aaron Jones. In essence, he felt that Tannenbaum was displaying a dearth of knowledge about the Texans. Co-host Sean Payne added that the Texans attempted to run the ball but did not do so successfully.

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“Yeah, at all,” Pendergast agreed,” so Tannenbaum got kind of exposed there by those two guys, and then so that’s just blood in the water at that point.”

The program then played another clip in which Smith told Tannenbaum that he has to know how to “take the L.” Tannenbaum continued to affirm how impressive it was to see what Love did after sitting on the bench for two years, especially with the Packers adding offensive tackle Jordan Morgan. Smith replied by asking if wide receiver Stefon Diggs joining Stroud in Houston was not considered a big deal. Out of the 43 quarterbacks drafted between 2010 and 2023, Smith said, Stroud is the only one to have won a playoff start in his rookie season.

Payne expressed that he sent the clip to Mike Meltser, a fan of the New York Jets, the team for which Tannenbaum previously served as general manager. The reason he sent him this clip was because he wanted to know which one of two aspects of the conversation annoyed him more – either Tannenbaum’s opinion or the fact that he did not “understand the assignment” in this situation.

“The argument was about, ‘Who would you pick if you were starting a new franchise?,’ and Tannenbaum turns it into, ‘Hey, look at how good he could be this year because he’s set up for success on this team,’” Payne said. “Like that’s not the assignment. You don’t even understand the assignment, and you were running an NFL football team.”

Pendergast agrees with Smith and Clark in this instance, preferring C.J. Stroud over Jordan Love. Furthermore, he stated that Smith can probably realize when all he needs to do is yell while someone else is talking in order to get them to back down. The fact that Smith started to begin screaming and would not stop was something Pendergast considered to be really funny.

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As the discussion surrounding Tannenbaum on First Take came to a conclusion, Payne recalled the time the show interviewed him on Radio Row. Tannenbaum was working as an executive with the Miami Dolphins at the time, and Payne recognized that he was consistently scanning the room and not seeming engaged in the conversation. While he remarked that it can be a successful strategy for some people, he perceived him to be constantly thinking about who to speak with next.

“It’s a willing networker, but a bad networker,” Pendergast said. “It’s all about networking man, but you’ve got to make sure that people who you’re in a conversation with realize that you’re at least giving the impression that you’re engaged with their conversation.”

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