Mike Reiss appreciation

If there's one reporter out there who truly seems to have a pulse on both the team he's covering and their fans, it's Reiss. If you follow him closely like most of us here do, you can see how down to earth he is. Always mentions how lucky he is to be able to do this for a living, talks about the struggles of balancing his job with his other job (being a father and husband), and is almost always happy to interact with fans in person, whether at training camp or an away game meetup. It'll be a sad day if he ever leaves the Patriots beat for a more national position, but if he does, nobody else would be more deserving.

It is too bad that me have to praise guys for having some journalistic integrity. It feels like ESPN has become a sports TMZ sometimes

Lavictoire said:

Curran was piling on early speculating Kraft may part ways with Bellichick if the stories are true. The whole issue didn't even merit the attention it got so feeding the fire when we had a Super Bowl to play was not appreciated.

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This is a misrepresentation of what Curran said. He never seemed to think there was much water to the actual issue with the footballs. His point was it was unclear where the hell Kraft stood in all this, and so he asked that -if the Patriots were accused of cheating, would Kraft side with Goodell and come down on his coach. Seems silly, but before Kraft's open-fire speech the Monday of Super Bowl week, we were all kind of wondering just where the hell he stood. I think Curran was just pointing that out. In fact, he was one of the first ones to start floating the sting theories.

Anyways, no question, Reiss is great.

DarrylS said:

Initially he got caught, "beneath the wheel", but soon realized how dumb he was for doing so, and has recovered nicely..

I think he has a short shelf life in his tenure for ESPN...

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Off course he does, Darryl. He's far too classy for that cesspool.

meatface said:

It is too bad that me have to praise guys for having some journalistic integrity. It feels like ESPN has become a sports TMZ sometimes

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You being overly generous and kind to ESPN.

I've always appreciated Reiss and I don't think he'll be at ESPN much longer. He's not loud, trashy, or arrogant which seems to be a pre-req for most of their analysts.

I think there are some here who only appreciate homers. I don't mind if a journalist is critical of the team, so long as it's critical for the right reason. BB is just as critical of himself, as is Tom. Being a good analyst doesn't mean just fawning over the players and only writing fluff pieces. Sometimes mistakes are made, from the FO to the QB to the fans to the analysts.

But the thing I appreciate most about Reiss is that he truly thinks things through before writing them. Yes, he's made mistakes. We all do. But he's quick to own up to it, and his thought process on what brought him there is usually correct.

Guys like Borges are inflammatory intentionally. They write things they don't even believe because they're trying to get page hits. They would rather lie through their teeth and get noticed than stand by their convictions and have nobody notice. Reiss is the opposite. He speaks what he believes, and does so in a thoughtful way without screaming for attention. But we notice Mike, and we appreciate it.

One of the perceptions about Mike is he is never critical of the team which is really more about the way criticism is supposed to be done these days.

You can almost never read his chats or mail bags without it including him answering something by saying that a move hasn't worked out or they have struggled in an area (drafting and developing WRs for example) or that if they could do something again he thinks they would go in another direction. Since he criticizes in the same understated manner he does everything, not screaming about how something sucks, it is not viewed as criticism.