ESPN Duped By Twitter Troll, Airs 2-Year-Old Video Of Cowboys Training Camp

Someone at ESPN is having a bad day after the network aired a two-year-old video, mistakenly thinking the video was shot on Tuesday at Dallas Cowboys training camp.

During a segment on First Take, a clip was shown of Dak Prescott airing out a long pass to newly-acquired wide receiver George Pickens. Just a couple of problems, though: First, it wasn't Pickens — it was Brandin Cooks. Second, the Cowboys hadn't even taken the field for practice yet when this clip aired.

Yet there sat the whole panel, including NFL Insider Adam Schefter, not batting an eye.

The clip they used came from a tweet by a Cowboys fan (@FergSZN on X), who decided to troll his followers on Monday by sharing the video with the caption, "First play of Cowboys Training Camp is a Dak Prescott BOMB to George Pickens."

That video, though, was from July 31, 2023.

Clearly, the ESPN producer responsible failed to read the comments on the post or to notice that the video was a re-post from Cowboys insider Kyle Youmans. It's also worth noting that Pickens is a good 5-6 inches taller than Cooks.

"It’s actually mind-blowing how many people fell for this," @FergSZN wrote shortly after their initial post.

Later in the show, Qerim apologized for the blunder.

"Earlier, we showed video that we identified as George Pickens at Cowboys training camp — it was not George. So, we apologize on that mistake," she said.

Imagine being Youmans, though, and waking up to thousands of X notifications after your random, two-year-old training camp video went viral. He, too, had some fun with the whole situation.

"From my iPhone camera in 2023, to the leading headlines of First Take in 2025," he wrote on X. "This NFL social media circus we work in is a weird one sometimes…don’t worry, real practices start today."