By Paul Duncan

March 16, 2015

NFL free agency has gotten off to one of the fastest starts in history. Moves have been happening by the hour and it has been hard to keep up with. Thankfully there is Twitter and the race between reporters to get it first and get it right.

On March 10th we had a quarterback swap, a 26 QB retire, Jimmy Graham got traded, and Darrelle Revis went back to the Jets. Some of these events were rumored and others came out of the blue but most of this news was broken on twitter. The one man at the center of all of this is ESPN’s Adam Schefter who has the following and the skills to be considered the king of breaking NFL news.

Many people don’t even consider a rumor to be true until Schefter reports this. But in looking at his tweets he just says he gets them from “sources” while not mentioning who they are. After a quick look into it I discovered that local beat reporters usually report it first and then the big ESPN guys fact check it.

These writers who cover one team for a newspaper, radio, or blog based website. Sometimes these writers get their sources directly from the team like Vic Carucci of the Buffalo News, who broke news about the Scott Chandler release and was one of the first to break the Jerry Hughes signing.

Other reporters like Dustin Fox use personal connections. Dustin Fox and Brian Hartline both went Ohio State so when Hartline signed with the Browns he told Dustin first.  The most direct free agent news has come straight from source, or the player himself.  Andre Johnson was the very first to confirm that he was signing with the Colts via Instagram.

All these different methods of breaking NFL news in addition the frantic pace have made this free agency period one of the most exciting ever, and it’s not even halfway done. Oh and we still have the NFL Draft where rumors really can swirl around. The NFL media help make the NFL’s offseason the most exciting in sports.