Aaron Rodgers Will Certainly Be Welcome Back on the Pat McAfee Show Whenever He Wants

Pat McAfee announced on his show yesterday that Aaron Rodgers Tuesdays are over. For a brief moment it seemed like cooler heads had prevailed and maybe McAfee and his team realized that Rodgers was more of a problem than his headlines were worth, or perhaps someone at ESPN finally put a foot down, but McAfee made some clarifications in a 500-plus word tweet on Wednesday evening which makes it sound more like this was actually just a coincidence. Via Twitter:

Our fans know that ART ends shortly after Aaron’s team’s season ends.. that’s how it’s been. He’ll make random surprise welcomed pop ins during big events or offseason adventures but, it’s always been a season thing. I never said he’ll never be on the show again. I hope he chooses to still chat with us. We’ve been lucky the last 4 years to ride the wave of a season with a 4X NFL MVP (2 of which during The ART Era) and get his thoughts along the way.. in real time.

Looking back at the Aaron Rodgers Tuesday feed on YouTube, Rodgers has indeed appeared on the show until days after his teams' seasons have ended in three out of four years. The one exception was last season when Rodgers, with rumors swirling and questions lingering about his football future, kept appearing on the show through the Super Bowl despite the Packers missing the playoffs. He then went off the grid - including his darkness retreat - to figure stuff out and returned a month later (on a Monday) to reveal that he would continue his career with the New York Jets.

So there is still an open-door policy regarding Rodgers on PMS because no matter what anyone says, he's a great quarterback. It just seems weird to an outside observer that McAfee values Rodgers' appearances so highly since they seem to contradict something else he said in his tweet.

We are a sports show that tries to inform folks of what’s going on and have a good time with good vibes… Everyday.

Rodgers is a lot of things, but good vibes is not one of them. If they really cared about good vibes they wouldn't feature a regular guest whose only motivation is to complain about the people he annoyed or aggrieved on his previous appearance. Oh, and complain about vaccines two years after he was caught lying about being vaccinated.

This is truly the most remarkable part. It's been two full years since Rodgers, the unrepentant truth-teller, said he was "immunized." Everyone has moved on from the vaccines. They're available and they aren't hurting anyone, despite what other conspiracy peddling wannabe experts say.

Rodgers didn't get vaccinated and no one made him get vaccinated. And we're well past the point where vaccination status affects your ability to do anything in America. By the way, the NFL apparently didn't have a single player or coach test positive for COVID this season. A more cynical person might think they completely stopped caring, but a sports show that cared about good vibes might spin it the other way as the country has opened up and moved on, unlike Rodgers, who is fighting a culture war that ended when he was in Green Bay.

McAfee goes on to say that he doesn't like being in "political wars and public beefs," but again, that's all Rodgers. If Rodgers stays away for his entire offseason it's very unlikely the McAfee show upsets anyone between now and next fall. He and his team will just be able to "talk shit about sports" every day in peace. Imagine a world where a sports program on ESPN just talked about sports. It's so crazy it just might work. Or maybe that's a conspiracy theory that I just can't let go.