“How it came out makes me very, very sad and angry at the same time.” Josh Allen told reporters on Saturday after the Bills’ preseason game against the Browns.
He’s referring to Ed Oliver’s two-year-old son drowning at the end of June.
The story initially broke with an On Scene TV post that included video of police and EMS crews responding to Oliver’s home for a report of a possible drowning. The video was posted to On Scene TV’s Instagram page on June 30th, despite the incident occurring two days earlier.
Several Bills’ beat writers have since claimed they knew about the tragedy, but chose not to report it. That kept the story quiet until earlier this week when Bills’ Head Coach Joe Brady dodged questions about the injury status of several of his players, pointing to league rules that don’t require extensive injury details until Week 1.
One of the players Brady avoided answering injury questions about was Ed Oliver. In doing so, Brady caused several journalists to wonder why his response was so secretive. Independent Journalist Tony Farmer then pulled a thread that led him to the June 30th On Scene TV post.
Farmer wrote about his findings in an article posted to X. The platform quickly took down the post. Tony suspects people made false complaints about the article, causing it to not meet X’s community guidelines. Farmer responded by posting the article for free on Substack.
Since Farmer’s Friday post, the story went wide. Eventually Bills’ General Manager Brandon Beane issued a statement on the matter.
After that, every publication ran with it. TMZ, ESPN, and the NY Post refused to name Farmer as the person who shined the brightest light on the story.
The NY Post went so far as to claim ESPN/NFL Insider Cameron Wolfe broke the story on Saturday morning (Once again, Farmer’s post was on Friday).
Obviously this is nothing short of a horrific tragedy. And maybe the general public didn’t need to know about it yet.
At the same time, this outcome was inevitable. Oliver was going to have to address it sooner or later. Surely the Bills and their local media knew that eating the story was a delay tactic, not a permanent solution. And when the media is suppressing a story, even for the right reasons, their decision is going to be met with some level of skepticism and scrutiny if someone else reports first.
Personally, I don’t think there’s more than meets the eye on this tragedy. I think the Bills were trying to protect their player’s wish for privacy. Beat writers are known to eat stories to protect their access, so no surprise there.
And no, the local Bills’ media doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt from me. Don’t forget, Bills’ beat writers ate several stories about Stefon Diggs causing locker room issues until he was traded away. They also suppressed stories about Sean McDermott’s strange Al-Qaeda analogy speech, until disgruntled writer Tyler Dunne, who already lost his access, came forward with it. Those situations aren’t a fraction as serious as Ed Oliver losing his son.
The fallout for Farmer has been intense. He’s received vicious social media attacks. Josh Allen’s comments are seemingly directed at him (Though I don’t know that for a fact). Bills’ local media are implying Farmer lacks journalistic ethics.
To be honest, I don’t actually credit Tony for breaking the story so much as merely connecting the dots. Technically On Scene TV broke the story. Tony just wrote about finding their post.
Even if you want to argue that Farmer broke the story; all that would mean is the goal posts have moved. ESPN reported on Buccaneers’ Linebacker Shaquil Barrett’s child drowning within 24 hours of the horrific incident back in 2023. Farmer didn’t report on Oliver’s tragedy until over a month after the fact. Now that the NFL owns 10% of ESPN, are the rules different?
Josh Allen is entitled to his frustrations. We all are. They might be misguided though. Maybe he should actually be mad at his head coach for being so cagey and defensive about the injury report that it sent journalists down the rabbit hole in the first place. According to Pro Football Talk, Brady claims Oliver has a legitimate injury. Assuming Brady’s telling the truth, if he just would have released the injury report, it’s significantly less likely that Farmer, or anybody else, looks into Ed Oliver and stumbles across the On Scene TV post at all.
Or maybe Allen should be mad at On Scene TV for posting the video in the first place.
Then of course there’s the other people he could point his anger to. The ones looking down their nose at Farmer.
The Beat Writers who suppressed the story could have reported on it in a responsible and considerate way once they learned about the situation. Instead, they ate the story, which then caused its release to inevitably become controversial. Were they paying no attention to how the Shanahan situation has developed?
There is no good way to talk about the death of Ed Oliver’s son. It’s nothing short of a heartbreaking tragedy. In fact, I couldn’t bring myself to look through all of the pictures the NY Post included in their article about the tragedy. I found that to be more disturbing than anything Tony did, by the way. How sick do you have to be to post cute photos of Oliver and his son, not to share news, but to intentionally evoke an emotion? Isn’t that worse? Sharing news is just sharing facts, even awful ones. Attempting to evoke an emotion through posted photos is strictly for the clicks.
Personally, I don’t think Tony Farmer is the problem. He found something out and he shared it. Tony’s brought us a ton of truths this offseason (About Russini/Vrabel, Matt Miller, Schefter, Shanahan, etc.) I don’t think we get to praise Tony for finding/uncovering truths we like, and then shame him for uncovering the ones we don’t. This feels like everyone is outraged at the tragedy Tony uncovered, so they decided to shoot the messenger.
-Written by Seattle Mike