‘First Take’ muzzles Chris Russo from ranting about Bill Belichick’s girlfriend

Chris Russo has offered to placate ESPN before.

The ‘Mad Dog’ was willing to sit idly by and shelve some of his Bronny James takes. Stephen A. Smith encouraged him to let him rip. But when it comes to Jordon Hudson, the 24-year-old girlfriend of Bill Belichick, the longtime radio host wasn’t given as much rope. In fact, during his “What are you mad about?” segment on Wednesday, Molly Qerim encouraged the 65-year-old Russo to stand down.

“I got a lot more that I can give you,” says Russo. “The [New York] Rangers just fired their head coach. Missus Belichick’s girlfriend with the 28-3, you know, which drove me crazy. Did you see that this week?”

Qerim actually asked Russo to fill her in on the story she might’ve missed amid a packed headline week. But a few seconds later, she offered a “They said no,” perhaps hinting that the producers of First Take put the kibosh on ranting about the North Carolina Tar Heels head coach’s 24-year-old girlfriend.

Russo had much more to give the folks watching at home, or us at Awful Announcing. But he was stopped, dead in his tracks. We’ll never know what he was going to say, but he promised to edit himself, whatever that means. We’ll also never know why he got the red light. He claimed – probably joking — that Qerim got him in trouble, but they didn’t actually go through with it. And Russo didn’t say anything, either.

He promised it wasn’t bad, though. We would’ve liked to be the judge of that, but alas…

ESPN hasn’t done this to Russo, but it usually has an idea of what he’ll say before he’s on-air. Maybe it would have been different if he had mentioned it in the production meeting.

Or perhaps they simply ran out of time.

Even the ‘Mad Dog’ has a leash. And it was ESPN’s producers holding it.