Pat McAfee declared on Wednesday that conspiracy-peddling NFL star Aaron Rodgers is “done” as a guest on his show for the rest of the season. The ESPN host said he’s “pumped” he won’t have to deal with the weekly controversy that comes with the New York Jets star’s unhinged rants.
McAfee’s announcement comes a day after Rodgers’ latest weekly paid appearance on The Pat McAfee Show featured the four-time MVP refusing to apologize to Jimmy Kimmel for suggesting he was an associate of Jeffrey Epstein amid a bizarre 30-minute-long rant about COVID-19 vaccines and Dr. Anthony Fauci.
Rodgers also repeatedly blasted ESPN executive Mike Foss for issuing an apology over the quarterback’s Kimmel remarks, telling Foss that “you are not helping” by calling Rodgers’ remarks a “dumb and factually inaccurate joke.” McAfee signed an $85 million deal with ESPN last year to air his daily sports talk show while Kimmel works for ABC, which is owned by ESPN’s parent company Disney.
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“So ‘Aaron Rodgers Tuesday’ season four is done,” McAfee said at the top of Wednesday’s broadcast while his co-hosts applauded. “There are going to be a lot of people that are happy with that, myself included, to be honest. With the way it ended, it got real loud! Real loud. I’m happy that is not going to be in my mentions, going forward, which is great news.” (The ESPN host, however, did not clarify whether Rodgers would return for the next NFL season, which begins in the fall.)
Referencing his own recent accusations that ESPN Executive Editor Norby Williamson was trying to “sabotage” his show, McAfee called himself an “overconfident human being” but defended his actions. (While ESPN airs two hours of McAfee’s show every weekday, the ex-NFL punter produces the program separately and licenses it to the sports giant.)
“If I think you are trying to hold me or my guys back, I’m an asshole too,” he exclaimed. “Certainly. I don’t need you. ‘Hey, what are you?’ Nothing. Sweet. See ya!”
McAfee suggested “middle-management producers” don’t respect him or his show before circling back to some of the headaches that his Rodgers segments have created.
“All these people that think we jumped the line and don’t deserve it, those people have hated us since we were on the internet,” he said. “I have a lot of respect for them and their hustle and grind, but they were going to be against us forever, and we knew that. I knew that coming into this.”
Acknowledging that his show has “given them a lot of stuff to get mad about” recently, he admitted that “we have messed up in that particular aspect” with the latest Rodgers appearances.
“We live in a country that has freedom of speech but also you’re gonna have to deal with the consequences of your freedom of speech,” he stated. “We’ve given a lot of people who have been waiting for us to fail a lot of ammo and things to attack us for over the last week. And we would love to get back to the point where we just move on and continue to silence all the haters over here who can't negotiate as good as I can, all the people over here who can't create a show as good as us, and all the people up here who just will always be here and will always hustle and do their thing, which I respect. But we need to do that, and that is our focus, that is our goal.”
Calling Rodgers a “massive piece of the NFL story whenever you go back and tell it,” McAfee said his show was “lucky to have a chance to chat with him and learn from him.” At the same time, he acknowledged that some of Rodgers’ “thoughts and opinions do piss off a lot of people.”
Ultimately, McAfee expressed gratitude that he won’t have to deal with the fallout from another “Aaron Rodgers Tuesday” going forward. “I’m pumped that that is no longer going to be every single Wednesday of my life, which it has been for the last few weeks,” he celebrated.
The ESPN host concluded that he is excited to return to talking about sports, and “that I don’t have to do these types of talks anymore.”
