Remembering ESPN’s Chris Mortensen, who changed how the NFL is covered

The phone call Adam Schefter always feared came on his first Sunday at home in five months. It was early March, and

colleague, Mel Kiper, Jr., “Nobody was prepared for it to happen now.” Mort spent the night before he died at home on his horse farm in Arkansas watching football drills and TV coverage of the combine, cracking jokes on text threads. Jeremiah got the news during a commercial break the next day, then broke down when Rich Eisen asked him about it on the air. The man who’d jumpstarted his career — “None of it happens without him,” he says — was gone.

in large part because of Chris Mortensen, and the two grew close over the years. They didn’t come for the reporter. They came for the man. Former head coaches. Current general managers. Hundreds of in 2009, his bosses were on board — as long as Mort was on board. At the time, Mort was was sitting on the couch. It was January 1998, a week before the played the in the Super Bowl in San Diego, and Mort was in town to cover the game. He’d attended a church service hosted by Jeremiah’s father, David, and stopped by for lunch afterward. Daniel was a 21-year-old quarterback at Appalachian State with dreams of getting into broadcasting. “Well, I’ve got an interview with Reggie White tomorrow, would you wanna come with me?” Mort asked him.

. Mort brought with him the reporting chops he’d honed at The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Sporting News and The National. Suddenly, he was everywhere: on “NFL Game Day,” which became “NFL Countdown,” which became “Sunday NFL Countdown.” As the league’s popularity boomed, Mort became one of the faces of the network. More than that, he became the pulse of the NFL.

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