Chris Mortensen, a fixture for years on ESPN NFL coverage, died Sunday at age 72, the company announced in a statement.
Mortensen spent 33 years working for ESPN from 1991 through his retirement last September, most of them as the network’s primary NFL insider. He would later share that role with Adam Schefter. His passing comes eight years after he was diagnosed with Stage IV throat cancer, but there was no word as of Sunday whether that was the cause of his death.
Though he did not inaugurate the insider role on NFL pregame shows — Will McDonough beat him to it by a few years when he joined “The NFL Today” on CBS in 1986 — Mortensen occupied the position longer than any of his contemporaries, reporting on generations of NFL players during his ESPN tenure.
With the possible exception of Schefter, whose social media presence has made him a well-known figure, it is arguable that nobody has been more identified with the insider role than Mortensen.
As previously noted, Mortensen was diagnosed with Stage IV throat cancer in early 2016. He did not return to his regular role until the following year and treatment would cause him to miss time occasionally in the years thereafter. Starting in 2019, he took on a lesser role at ESPN to focus on his health.
While best known for his time at ESPN, Mortensen was already an accomplished, award-winning reporter by the time he joined the company. He spent 22 years in journalism before joining ESPN, including with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution as an investigative reporter and beat writer. He left the AJC for The National — the short-lived but much-remembered sports journalism venture — in 1989. His career began in 1969 with the California newspaper The Daily Breeze.
