Pat McAfee announces Aaron Rodgers’ appearances are over for the rest of this NFL season
Aaron Rodgers’ Tuesday appearances on “The Pat McAfee Show” are over for the rest of this NFL season.
Or possibly longer.
McAfee announced at the beginning of his Wednesday show on ESPN that his fourth season of doing a weekly segment with the New York Jets quarterback had concluded.
As his staff applauded in the background, McAfee said a lot of people would be happy to hear that news, including himself.
“With the way it ended, it got real loud. I’m happy that that is not going to be in my mentions going forward, which is great news,” McAfee said. “We are very lucky to get a chance to chat with him and learn from him. Some of his thoughts and opinions though do (tick) off a lot of people, and 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.”
Rodgers implied during a Jan. 2 appearance on McAfee’s show that comic Jimmy Kimmel’s name might appear on a list of associates of Jeffrey Epstein, a millionaire accused of sex trafficking involving underage victims before he died by suicide.
That escalated a long-running feud between ABC’s late-night star and Rodgers. It also proved embarrassing for The Walt Disney Co., the parent company to both networks.
On Tuesday, Rodgers denied he implied the comic Kimmel was a pedophile and condemned those who do, but he stopped short of apologizing for earlier comments.
“Any type of name calling is ridiculous and I’m not calling him (a pedophile), and neither should you,” Rodgers said on the show Tuesday.
Rodgers criticized Mike Foss, an ESPN executive who oversees McAfee’s show, for saying that Rodgers had made “a dumb and factually inaccurate joke” about Kimmel.
“Mike, you’re not helping,” Rodgers said. “You’re not helping because I just read earlier exactly what I said. This is the game plan of the media and this is what they do: They try to cancel, you know, and it’s not just me.”
Rodgers last week said a lot of people, “including Jimmy Kimmel,” are really hoping that a list of Epstein’s associates doesn’t come out publicly. Kimmel, who has denied any association with Epstein, threatened Rodgers with a lawsuit for the comment and said the NFL star was putting his family in danger.
Rodgers suggested that people were reading too much into what he said.