At least Aaron Rodgers made it longer as a guest on The Pat McAfee Show than he did as a quarterback this NFL season.
The not-so-surprising news of The Pat McAfee Show end their weekly partnership with the New York Jets quarterback was made official today, and by the way McAfee presented it, he’s somewhat relieved that “Aaron Rodgers Tuesdays” are over.
An admittedly confident, and outgoing personality, Pat doesn’t prefer to have mentions blowing up every Wednesday, and Aaron Rodgers is certainly a lightning rod for that. A lightning rod that often times doesn’t facilitate a conversation about sports.
Rodgers was reportedly supposed to be a part of the show all the way through the NFL playoffs, but his last guest spot, which included a conspiracy-theory-riddled rant, will be his last of “this season.”
In the past, Aaron had also appeared on Pat McAfee’s show sporadically throughout the offseason, though that doesn’t seem like a possibility now based on how McAfee explained it:
“What we do know is that the guy that stopped by yesterday (Rodgers) caused quite a conversation. Now… so Aaron Rodgers Tuesday Season 4 is done.
There should be a lot of people that are happy about that, myself included to be honest. With the way that it ended, it got real loud…real loud. I’m happy that’s not going to be in my mentions going forward, which is great news.”
McAfee was certainly hearing about the Rodgers controversy from all directions, whether it was ESPN executives or keyboard warriors calling him out on social media. He added that there are people that already don’t like them, and the Rodgers conversations are just giving them more ammo:
“Over the last week we have certainly given them all a lot of stuff to get mad about and become loud about, we’ve messed up in that particular aspect. I mean we’re a conversation show, people are having conversations, 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.”
Pat also reiterated he’s entirely in control of his content, and has negotiated as such, implying that ESPN didn’t force them to can A-Rod for the rest of the season (although I’m sure they are ecstatic). But when Rodgers got even deeper into Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories during his latest appearance, and after the blowback from the Jimmy Kimmel beef, it sounds like the headache isn’t worth the eyeballs to Pat and company.
Pat concluded his segment revolving around the announcement by saying this:
“Aaron Rodgers is a hall of famer. He’s a 4-time MVP (and) he’s massive piece of the NFL story. Whenever you go back and tell it, he will be a huge part of it.
We are very lucky to get a chance to chat with him and learn from him. Some of his thoughts and opinions though do piss off a lot of people, and I’m pumped that that’s no longer going to be every single Wednesday of my life, which it has been for the last couple of weeks.
On Friday, obviously, I threw us into the fire as well, (and) I’ll forever stand by that. Everything else though, (we) just can’t do that, and it’s not what we want to be known for.”
“Aaron Rodgers Tuesdays,” a segment that has been running since 2020, typically airs during the regular season, although he did make some post season appearances last year (the Packers did not make the playoffs last year). I would imagine he’ll be back next year as well.
You can view the entire clip from The Pat McAfee Show below:
