Dan Le Batard and Jeff Pearlman 100% disrespected the courage that it took for Chris Johnson to tell Michael Strahan on Good Morning America, nationwide, about his ALS diagnosis. 

The former Tennessee Titans star running back showed his new body in his condition in front of the world in a vulnerable spot next to his loving, supportive, caretaking wife, parents of four children. 

Pearlman and Le Batard’s reactions to Strahan’s interview was disrespectful in how they approached the connection of football and ALS. Pearlman quoted a study in the American Medical Association on how football players were four times more likely to wind up with ALS than the general population.

“So, look, there’s a tie,” Pearlman said on his TikTok account. “If Michael Strahan were being genuinely inquisitive and genuinely at all journalistic, I know he’s not a journalist by training, but blah blah blah. There are a couple questions you have to ask. Number one, do you regret playing football? Looking at your life now, sitting here at 40, seeing the ties between football and ALS, the possibility that that game causes. If you could do it all over again, would you play? And maybe (Johnson) says no, I would do it, it was worth it. Maybe he says, no, I would do it either way. That’s the money question of a reasonable interview.”

Yes… Pearlman “Yada Yada’d” the fact that Strahan is not a journalist… in this… situation.

Le Batard, on his show on his Meadowlark Media platform, responded in lockstep with Pearlman. 

“I believe it’s reasonable criticism to file for the media in general, not talking about these links,” Le Batard said. “Michael Strahan has a responsibility in that instance to ask some sort of football-related question, and he did not do it, and he came under no criticism from anybody except Jeff Perlman, because we don’t actually want to know.”

I respect both of their journalism careers. I don’t dislike either one of them. But they completely missed the mark and were out of bounds in their reaction to the Strahan interview with the former NFL great.

There’s a time and place

Time and place has been a common phrase for longer than I’ve been alive, and it matters, especially in a delicate, sensitive, emotional, fragile situation that takes tremendous courage for somebody to confront in a public setting.

Johnson, like his former Titans teammate Tim Shaw, recognized the platform he has living with ALS as a former NFL player. 

The rapid rate at which Johnson’s body has declined stunned everybody because the last time we publicly saw him was at the Senior Bowl in late Jan. 2025. He was starting a scouting career. He was coaching up guys on the field at practices. He looked great.

The next time we see him, he looks like a shell of himself. It’s terrifying. At 40 years old, one year into his ALS diagnosis, he already needs the speech generation machine using AI through his recorded voice to communicate. He can’t lift a cup in a year.

Pearlman and Le Batard think it was Strahan’s responsibility in this moment to make it about their anti-football agenda. 

“Football does not want you talking about the violence causing early deaths or ALS or any of the risks involved with a sport that just keeps growing and growing and growing,” Le Batard added.

They’re not wrong about the NFL and the overarching football world not wanting this talked about because it could hurt the league’s bottom line. I’m not saying that’s wrong. But it’s about time and place.

Chris Johnson is still him

Here is what makes their reaction the most disrespectful. Listen to what Johnson told us on Good Morning America. 

“First, I want people to know I’m still me,” Johnson said on GMA. “ALS has changed what my body can do, but it hasn’t changed who I am.”

Pearlman thinking this was the moment, and Le Batard acting like this was the only opportunity for Johnson to address the football question, disrespects his future. That mind is still right there, and he has other chances to continue using this platform to talk about the connection between football and ALS, to help drive research donations and gifting, which he is doing. He can be asked the football question later.

This was an announcement. A big surprise to all of us. I think it caught everybody off guard in the NFL public, and it has a lot of people heartbroken.

So we could take this week and this moment to remember Johnson’s athletic prowess. The NFL record holder for most scrimmage yards in a season. The NFL record holder for most 80-yard touchdowns scored in a career. He held the 40-yard dash record for roughly 15 years before Xavier Worthy broke it. This guy was one of the best athletes of his era, and his body is gone, but his mind is right here.

We can still talk to Chris Johnson. He can still tell us his answer to the “do you regret playing football” question later on.

Support Chris Johnson, his family, and ALS research

This was a time to support Johnson, his wife Brittany, and his family. Support ALS research. Paul Kuharsky said he texted with Shaw, who shared that Johnson has helped him get an extra pep and boosted him back into continuing treatment rather than being stuck in survival mode.

It is not the time nor the place for Pearlman and Le Batard to be selfish and to criticize Strahan for not asking somebody if they regretted playing football right off the bat. It’s a fair question to ask Johnson. It’s a fair question to ask Shaw. I feel like Shaw has been asked that before. It’s a fair question to ask Chris Johnson. Just not at that time, in that place.

Get a grip of yourself. Be a human being for a second.