NBC's Al Michaels said he had "written out the points" he wanted to make during the Patriots-Ravens AFC Divisional playoff game regarding the Mueller Report because he was "dealing with, in effect, a legal document" and he wanted to be sure he had "everything right." He sat for an extensive Q&A with THE MMQB's Jenny Vrentas and recounted the decision to address the report during the game, which resulted in a barrage of people questioning the authenticity of the comments made by Michaels and analyst Cris Collinsworth. He said, "I’m sure to some people, it sounded like a script. ... What I really did is recount some of the specifics of the report. Now again, you had [NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell] sitting in the stands. There’s a lot of animus towards Roger from a lot of people, and no matter what the report said, they were still going to feel that way. But I felt the key thing to do -- and I know [NBC Sports Chair] Mark Lazarus, I think he talked about this at the boxing press conference -- was we were there to report the facts. And then Cris came in with his comment, editorially, about Roger." Michaels noted Collinsworth "felt it was important for him to say, 'Look, I know him as an honorable man.'" Michaels: "That probably turned some people off. But let’s reverse this for a second. Let us say that we had this game, Roger is at the game, Baltimore is in the game, and we ignored it. I think then, we should have come in for some criticism. But instead, we had to address it, and this is the way we felt it was fair to address it." He added, "We live in this world of tweeting, and social media, and anti-social media, and all the rest, so no matter what you say, there is going to be what people say is a firestorm" (MMQB.SI.com, 1/23).
