The Boston Red Sox's ugly start to the 2026 season (2-8 record) has prompted an abundance of overreactions from fans and media members alike. However, no Red Sox rant has been quite as striking and vitriolic as the tirade that FOX Sports' Colin Cowherd delivered on Monday.
Cowherd absolutely tore into the entire Red Sox organization from top to bottom. He began his speech by acknowledging Boston's wildly successful stretch from 2004-18, which produced four World Series championships.
Then, Cowherd launched into a succession of hot takes ranging from questionable to downright absurd in their nature. He first described the Red Sox as a team with "no bats," which is just objectively false, despite Boston's early offensive struggles this season.
Colin Cowherd just tore apart the Red Sox organization in front of a national audience
In pointing out that the Tampa Bay Rays have more playoff wins than Boston since 2020, Cowherd called the Red Sox, "Tampa Bay with a really cool, big, green wall."
Cowherd still wasn't done. He snuck in a haymaker by insinuating that Boston's front office should be graded lower than the Nico Harrison-led Dallas Mavericks front office that infamously traded Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers last season (Harrison has since been fired).
"You guys think the Luka trade was bad?" Cowherd declared, asserting that the Red Sox completely eviscerated their entire franchise in even worse fashion by trading Mookie Betts.
"They're Tampa Bay with a really cool, big, green wall. That's what they are."@colincowherd talks about the decline of the Boston Red Sox pic.twitter.com/gpFPavujp1
— Herd w/Colin Cowherd (@TheHerd) April 6, 2026
There's a lot to unpack here, and there were further insults and accusations from Cowherd's 150-second rant that haven't even been mentioned. Cowherd's target audience was a national one. He knows that Red Sox fans are already well aware of the reverberating, terrible effects of the Betts trade — the deal and its aftermath have been discussed ad nauseam for years in Boston.
The Red Sox have placed themselves in a position to be ridiculed
Cowherd's mission here was to wake up the rest of the nation to the decline of a once-great franchise. This was his aim and clear narrative, whether you agree with its thesis or not. The timing of Cowherd's take was questionable, seeing as he was discussing a team that is nine games into a 162-game season, having made the playoffs the previous season.
On the other hand, not all of Cowherd's comments were out of touch. The Red Sox organization has dropped off substantially from the glory days of '04 to '18, as he explained. Ultimately, though, Cowherd may have gone too far with the cross-sport comparison to the Doncic deal, a trade that's been described as one of the most shocking (and potentially worst) transactions of all time.
The fact that there will be thousands of fans online agreeing with Cowherd and using this as further fuel to bash the Red Sox is troubling, but it's the team's (and organization's) fault to begin with. When you disappoint your fans, underperform, or put seemingly infinite fiscal resources to ill use, criticism of the darkest nature follows. That criticism is rarely fully accurate, but that doesn't make it any less attractive to the fans who are looking for a place to air out their frustrations.
The fact that the Red Sox have even put themselves in a position low enough to be attacked this way — and with these comparisons — by Cowherd is a loss in and of itself. Now, Alex Cora's club must ignore all of the noise and dig themselves out of this hole. Wilyer Abreu's bat will eventually cool off, and the American League East isn't getting any easier. Cora must start getting aggressive with lineup changes and figure out how to turn this ship around. The season is just getting started.