An early edition on Saturday Sunday Splash! article landed from ESPN.

Citing unnamed sources, Adam Schefter’s item stated that the players were unnamed want to be traded to the commanders. Here is the key phrase: “In recent weeks, there have been players who have privately stated or told their agents that they want to be traded to the Commanders, league sources told ESPN.”

Okay, so how much? Two would be technically enough to make that claim true.

As an executive from another team asked PFT, “Doesn’t this feel like a weird article?”

It’s definitely unusual. Why is there no report of players wanting to be traded to the 7-0 Chiefs? Or the 6-1 Lions? And while I may not remember it, I can’t recall many (if any) occasions when a report surfaced in the final days of a previous year’s trade deadline that players wanted to be traded to a specific team because of the team itself .

Normally a player wants to go from a non-contender to a random contender. Sometimes a player wants to be reunited with a teammate or a coach. Rarely, if ever, does one or more players want to target one specific team in one specific trading cycle.

The deeper purpose of the report probably lies in this sentence: “But even if the Commanders can’t complete a single trade by the deadline, the fact that certain players are eager to land in Washington bodes well for the franchise in free agency and in years will come, league sources told ESPN.”

Parse that sentence. League sources said unnamed players looking to be traded to the Commanders “bodes well for the franchise”? That’s not a fact, it’s an opinion. And it’s not the kind of opinion that should get the benefit of anonymous sources. That’s true in this case, for a very important reason.

Apart from the fact that this is a good example of the consideration behavior that puts Schefter at the front of the line for text messages about Washington-related transactions five minutes before they are announced, the article does not contain an important disclaimer. Bob Myers, a former NBA executive who was instrumental in the effort to turn around the formerly embattled franchise, works for ESPN.

Whether Myers’ employment with the same company that employs Schefter has anything to do with Schefter’s Commanders promo, couched as actual reporting, is one thing. The fact that Myers and Schefter both work for ESPN is another fact.

That fact should have been made public. And it wasn’t.