The news of a deadly car accident involving Miami edge rusher Reuben Bain Jr. last week set off a broader debate over reporting on the NFL Draft, one that now has veteran draft analyst Todd McShay calling Ollie Connolly, the reporter who broke the Bain news, a “scumbag.”
According to police and court documents from the Miami area cited by Connolly, Bain was at fault in a crash in March 2024 that resulted in the death of a young woman. No field sobriety test was administered, but the Hurricanes star was cited for reckless driving. That charge was dropped several weeks later.
A follow-up report from OutKick’s Trey Wallace showed that Bain later settled a lawsuit with the driver of the vehicle struck in the accident. The young woman who died was a passenger in the plaintiff’s car. Wallace also uncovered a second accident from October 2025, for which Bain was also cited for careless driving.
In the aftermath of both reports, McShay claimed in a post on X that he and several other NFL reporters, as well as most NFL teams, knew of the accident prior to Connolly’s report.
In an appearance on the Stugotz and Company show on Thursday, McShay doubled down in his defense of those who kept the story quiet, calling Bain “a really good young man” while ripping Connolly, an independent football reporter, as a “scumbag.”
“Honestly, I think the person that posted this is kind of a scumbag, the timing of it. ‘Look at me, click on my (article),’” McShay said.
“Because you know what? I know several respected insiders who had this information, and it’s not indicative of who Reuben Bain is as a person. And NFL teams have already been aware of this information, vetted this information. The only concern is, will more come up after the fact?”
Connolly has not posted on X since sharing a link to his report on Bain, but many NFL reporters have verified his reporting, which he backed up with links to the public documents he cited.
From McShay’s point of view, the issue seems to be that the story is irrelevant to Bain’s future career and does not represent his character. McShay revealed that he first learned of the incident in mid-January and added that, even then, it was not “news” to NFL teams.
Beyond the timing, McShay believes that the support for Bain from the Miami program signals that the young defender has grown from the incident and has strong enough character for an NFL team to invest a top pick and millions in him.
“Reuben Bain was the heartbeat of that program. It’s not like, ‘Oh, he’s a good guy, we stand by him.’ It’s, ‘No. Get outta here,’” McShay explained. “He made a horrible mistake, and you hope there’s maturity in that. And fortunately, the family, it sounds like, of the young lady who was tragically killed has come to peace with it.”
McShay added that NFL teams are more worried about Bain’s physical attributes than the accident:
“The short arms are going to factor into where he gets drafted much more than that unfortunate incident.”
The broader Bain story raises numerous questions about the role of draft analysts in sports, who often have important personal intel on the players they cover, as well as the evolving nature of player privacy amid the professionalization of college sports.
But more pressing for now is McShay’s apparent position that Connolly crossed an ethical line by sharing publicly available information about one of the most high-profile characters of the NFL offseason, simply to get clicks.