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Ryan Clark has been an NFL analyst at ESPN for years.
That's no longer the case, as the Pittsburgh Steelers' Super Bowl champion lost his job on Monday.
There are more layoffs coming at ESPN, so it won't seem shocking in a few days. But the way it happened was.
Clark was in the middle of a broadcast of NFL Live, working on the show, when he learned he was being let go, according to The Athletic's Andrew Marchand.
The former safety didn't finish the show.
In Marchand's reporting, he reveals that ESPN had begun to get inquiries about Clark's job status.
They had planned to inform him Tuesday morning that he was being let go, but they didn't want him to hear from elsewhere.
"Sources at ESPN say the reason they told Clark during the show was due to media inquiries into his departure and a fear that the news would leak out before they could inform him," Marchand wrote on Monday night. "Since after the Super Bowl in February, sources had told The Athletic that Clark’s job could be in jeopardy. Last week, The Athletic learned that Clark was likely to be let go. ESPN’s plan was to do that on Tuesday morning, but after receiving calls on the matter chose to inform him during his show as they did not want him to read online before being told in person."
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ESPN and NFL Network are "expected to have more layoffs Tuesday," according to The Athletic.
That doesn't soften the blow for Clark, or for his colleagues who likely got some sense of what was happening in the middle of their show but essentially lost Clark as a teammate during a broadcast.
Clark has many fans for his work at ESPN and certainly has a chance to land on his feet, but this was a tough way for it to end.
