Could the world wide leader in sports possibly be growing tired of Pat McAfee’s “Aaron Rodgers Tuesdays?”
It might just be a coincidence on this Halloween-themed taping of The Pat McAfee Show, but the timing was definitely a little strange. In the second hour of the show, McAfee (dressed up as the now deceased whale that Colts Owner Jim Irsay tried to airlift) and co-host A.J. Hawk (dressed as Edwards Scissorhands) welcomed in Aaron Rodgers for their weekly segment.
Rodgers has been making headlines for some of the things he has said on the show (mostly about COVID vaccine stuff), as well as a story that revealed that McAfee was paying millions of dollars to the NFL quarterback for his weekly spot on the show now belonging to ESPN.
The New York Jets quarterback commented on the Halloween costumes on some of the people on the show, which then sparked a question from McAfee as to why Aaron wasn’t dressed up for his appearance on the show. Rodgers stated that he wore his costume the night before, which then lead to follow up guesses as to what it was.
Those guesses were:
-Dr. Anthony Fauci
-A Scientist
-The COVID Vaccine
-A Doctor
All of the guesses garnered a chuckle from the sunglasses-wearing Rodgers, and he finally told the show what his 2023 Halloween costume was:
“A spike protein.”
Just to quickly explain, spike proteins are the pesky parts of the COVID-19 virus that allow for it to latch onto other cells and infiltrate them, causing infection. So it seems like Rodgers was leaning all the way in on his COVID and vaccine skepticism with his costume.
The more interesting about his answer though is that’s the last piece of audio and visual that comes through in the video below, before the feed to the show suddenly and suspiciously drops out.
Take a look:
Could it be that ESPN was fed up with the controversial commentary on the COVID-19 virus from Rodgers and had someone in a producer’s chair somewhere ready to pull the plug if he started up about it again? Or was it just a coincidence that The Pat McAfee Show lost connection right when they were getting into that topic?
Some are saying that the feed to the show didn’t cut out with their providers, and the stream never stopped on YouTube, where McAfee’s audience primarily consumes their content. Others are putting their tin foil hats on and saying that the world wide leader in sports might have put the axe in the show, at least for the moment.
You can view some of the commentary surrounding the oddly timed feed drop below:
Of course the evil overlords @espn / @Disney shut it down.
— GemStateStacker (@GemStateStacker) October 31, 2023
This didn’t happen on my TV? It kept playing..
— Bengalorian (@thebengalorian) October 31, 2023
Why Pat Mcafee shouldn’t have sold out to ESPN and should’ve done his own thing
— J 🐌 (@HumphreyBurna) October 31, 2023
This didn’t happen lol just was a bad feed someone recorded. It aired as normal on other feeds / services.
— Rob Lopez (@r0bato) October 31, 2023
Some are saying this is due to different TV providers and not YouTube.
— MLFootball (@_MLFootball) October 31, 2023
As you can see, some people are saying it was just a limited feed interruption, and did not affect some providers like YouTube and YouTube TV. If it was just coincidental, it was a spooky coincidence, which fits perfectly into the celebration of Halloween.
McAfee and company addressed the incident later in the broadcast, discussing MLFootball and Awful Announcing who “broke the news.”
