Drew Brees lightning ad duped prominent NFL reporter

Drew Brees was involved in an attempted viral marketing ad for a sports betting website that appeared to show the former NFL quarterback getting struck by lightning. 

Most people were able to sniff out that it was fake, especially as hours went by and there was no additional reporting from the Saints, the NFL, Brees, or most of the NFL insiders that would be breaking such a story. 

But there were a couple of prominent reporters that did get duped by the storyline. 

ProFootballTalk's Mike Florio was the most prominent to buy into the lightning strike storyline, even going as far as to write an article about how Brees was apparently hit by lightning. 

When it was eventually revealed by Brees and PointsBet that it was all a marketing stunt for their weekly "lightning bets" (oh, clever), Florio was highly critical of the company and Brees for going along with the stunt and argued they were going to deserve everything they were about to get. 

But Florio was not the only one to apparently get duped.

Darren Rovell, who seems to be more brand advertisement than human, also seemed to buy into the initial story before trying to play it off as a joke.

There are a few good rules of thumb to go by on things like this.

If it looks like a fake, it is probably a fake.

If a camera is running and filming another camera that is supposed to be filming something else, it is probably a fake. 

And if one of the most famous football players over the past 25 years is filmed being struck by lightning while filming an advertisement for a sports gambling company and nobody else has any reporting on it more than 10 hours later, and nobody connected with the league, the player, or his former teams has something to say on it, it is probably a fake. 

Or you could just do what Saints beat writer Katherine Terrell did and just try to reach out to the player in question and find out for sure.