Chris Mortensen, an award-winning sportswriter who pioneered the role of NFL Insider, reporting voraciously for various ESPN programs on trades, the draft, free agent signings, injuries, departures and scandals, died Sunday at Birmingham, Ala. 72.
His death, at the home of his son, Alex, was announced by ESPN, which did not comment. In 2016, Mr. Mortensen was treated for Stage 4 throat cancer. He lived in Bella Vista, Ark., in the northwest corner of the state.
Until his departure from the network last year, Mort, as he was known, broke news on programs such as “SportsCenter,” “Sunday NFL Countdown” and “Monday NFL Countdown,” as well as on ESPN Radio.
He wasn’t the NFL’s first entry into sports journalism. Will McDonough probably had that distinction, writing originals for The Boston Globe and appearing on NFL pregame shows on CBS and NBC. Mr. Mortensen was followed by a series of opponents, including Peter King, at Sports Illustrated and then NBC. Jay Glazer, on Fox Sports. Mike Florio, on Pro Football Talk. and Adam Schefter, on NFL Network.
In 2009, Mr. Schefter became Mr. Mortensen’s ESPN reporting partner for the league.
“When we were interviewing Adam Schefter, his biggest supporter at ESPN was Chris Mortensen,” John Walsh, a former executive editor at ESPN, said in a phone interview Monday. Mr. Mortensen did not see Mr. Schaefer as a potential replacement or a threat, Mr. Walsh added.
“Mort was the team’s key player,” he said.
Mr. King recalled admiring Mr. Mortensen’s prophetic decision in the mid-1990s to visit the fledgling Manning Passing Academy, which was started by Archie Manning, the former New Orleans Saints quarterback, before his sons Peyton and Eli enter the NFL this summer. The camp is for youth in eighth through 12th grade.
“Every great future college quarterback went there, and year after year Mort was there on the ground floor,” Mr. King said. “Our job was to get to know all the quarterbacks and get them to tell us things. Mort knew every quarterback from high school on. He was very intelligent in relationships.”
Mr. Mortensen and Mr. Schefter broke the news that Peyton Manning was signing with the Denver Broncos in 2012 after 13 seasons with the Indianapolis Colts. Four years later, early in his grueling months of cancer treatment, an ailing Mr. Mortensen received a call from Mr. Manning saying he was going to announce his retirement.
Writing for Sports Illustrated in 2017, Mr. King, who himself retired last week, recounted the conversation between the player and the ailing reporter.
“Do you want to report it?” asked Mr. Manning.
“I think I would,” Mr. Mortensen replied. “It would make me feel normal again.”
In 2016, Mr. Mortensen received the Dick McCann (now Bill Nunn) Award from the Professional Football Writers of America for outstanding coverage of the game. He received the award at the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony.
One of his biggest stories turned out to be wrong. In early 2015, after the American Football Conference championship game between the Colts and the New England Patriots, he posted a tweet and an online article stating that the NFL was investigating the Patriots for underinflating 11 of 12 in-game balls by two pounds per square inch .
He later clarified in a follow-up report that the balls were simply “significantly underinflated” but not necessarily by two pounds psi (An underinflated ball is easier to throw.)
But Mr. Mortensen left the original tweet and the online story uncorrected for six months, even after a league investigation showed that only one ball had been underinflated by as much as two pounds psi (He stuck with his claim that 11 balls were involved.) He later deleted the tweet and the article.
He later acknowledged that the deletions were a mistake.
Mr. Mortensen received a lot of criticism, some of it from Patriots fans, for his reporting on what became known as “Deflategate.” The league’s investigation led, among other things, to the 2015 suspension of New England quarterback Tom Brady for four regular-season games without pay for not fully cooperating with the investigation. a federal judge overturned the sentence.
Mr. Mortensen was less concerned about the criticism than the death threats he received. “Even after I got cancer, I had some death wishes,” he told The Ringer, the sports and pop culture website and podcasting network, in 2016.
Christian Anthony Mortensen was born on November 7, 1951 in Torrance, California. He attended El Camino College, a two-year school, beginning in 1969. That year he was hired to write about sports for The Daily Breeze, also in Torrance.
He remained there until 1983, when he moved to The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, where he covered the Atlanta Braves and Falcons and the NFL more broadly.
In 1987, he won a George Polk Award, one of journalism’s top awards, for a year of investigative reporting on a scandal involving college sports betting. He was the first sportswriter to win a Polk since Red Smith received the honor in 1950.
Mr. Mortensen left the Journal-Constitution in 1989 to join The National Sports Daily, where he worked for about two years as a reporter and columnist before the publication was folded in 1991. He also spent time in 1990 as a reporter on the CBS Sports pregame show “The NFL Today” after Mr. McDonough left for NBC.
Mr. Mortensen joined ESPN in 1991, at a time when the network was increasingly dependent on NFL news and programming. He became one of ESPN’s signature reporters, appearing on the network’s broadcasts throughout the week with nuggets of news that showed how deeply connected he was to team and league decision-makers.
Seth Markman, ESPN’s vice president and executive producer of the network’s NFL and college football coverage, said in an interview that Mr. Mortensen changed direction after returning to work from cancer treatments.
“It focused on bigger things, the bigger picture, more context, more why the decisions were made,” Mr. Markman said. “It was still very much our conscience, and Adam and I leaned on it so much: Should we report this? Is that fair?’
Mr. Markman added that Mr. Mortensen sometimes struggled to speak on television after the cancer diagnosis.
“He had a hard time salivating,” Mr Markman said. “He said, ‘You have to help me. If I get to the point of being incoherent, pull me out.’ It never got to that point.”
But after the NFL draft last year, Mr. Markman added, he “reached out.”
“He thought it was time to go.”
In addition to his son, Alex, the offensive coordinator of the football team at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, Mr. Mortensen is survived by his wife, Mickey Mortensen;
