Super Bowl: Aaron Rodgers' decision? Pat McAfee won't be left in the dark
Former Colts player Pat McAfee announces the Colts' third round pick at the NFL Draft on April 26, 2019, in Nashville, Tenn. Credit: AP/Gregory Payan
PHOENIX
The guy who probably will be the first to tell Jets fans whether their upcoming offseason rates a 12 out of 10 is not a traditional NFL insider. He’s not really a traditional anything, actually. He doesn’t cover the sport for NFL Network or ESPN or any of the other outlets that, for the next few months, will be churning out hundreds of notes and nuggets on their bottom-of-the-screen tickers and social media amplifiers.
Most likely it will be a former NFL punter turned pro wrestling-announcing, green iced tea-chugging, tank top- wearing podcast host who has become the unofficial mouthpiece for the biggest potential moving part in the league.
Pat McAfee has built himself into a charming, disarming, over-caffeinated cottage industry of sorts since he last played pro football at a position known for both its anonymity and interchangeability even though he was a Pro Bowler, but it’s his relationship with Aaron Rodgers that has made him (and his weekly in-season chats with the mercurial quarterback) one of the must-listens for fans.
It was McAfee who last year broke the news that Rodgers had decided to return to the Packers.
It was on McAfee’s show just this week that Rodgers informed the world of his pending “darkness retreat,” four days of sensory isolation without any light at all, to again mull his future.
And it almost certainly will be through McAfee that the world learns the result of that mental unplugging and all of the other machinations that will follow it.
Right now, though, McAfee is as in the dark as all of us (Rodgers included).
“The Aaron Rodgers stuff right now is really fascinating because there are so many decisions that have to be made,” McAfee told Newsday after his 3 1⁄2-hour stream of consciousness workout on Radio Row at the Super Bowl. “Aaron has to decide whether he wants to come back to football, and obviously he is going through his process. That’s obviously been talked about and speculated about a lot, but he is doing whatever he feels he needs to do to be him. I’m excited to hear how it turns out.”
Once Rodgers determines whether he is playing or not, the rest of the gears will be put into motion.
“If he says he wants to come back to football, Green Bay then has to tell him that they are either still in the Aaron Rodgers Era or if they want to move on to the Jordan Love Era,” McAfee said. “And if they decide that and he is on the move, I mean, there is a lot that can unfold.”
McAfee conceded that the Jets make sense.
“Why? Because you have a good young nucleus, you have talent at wide receiver, you have a good running back coming back healthy in Breece [Hall],” he said. “Defense is loaded. [Robert] Saleh needs it.”
He also noted that there is a lot to overcome for New York’s team in green. He doesn’t have any Jets fans on his show but knows plenty of them, including his WWE announcing partner, Michael Cole.
“I thought Mike White was maybe the next Tom Brady. It felt like Mike White was the answer,” McAfee said. “Then Chris Streveler came in that game and the place was going crazy for him right in Zach Wilson’s face. I don’t know. The Jets were seemingly so close to getting out of the Jets and now they’re more in it than ever. That’s the life I guess of [Jets fans].”
Rodgers could change that.
“Is he coming?” McAfee asked. “The Jets fans are dialed in right now.”
McAfee and Rodgers first met at a golf outing in the Bahamas in 2019 through A.J. Hawk, a former Packers teammate of Rodgers’. Rodgers needed a fourth and McAfee was around and the two hit it off. McAfee already was doing his podcast and took a stab at offering a weekly spot to Rodgers. He accepted.
Now just about every Tuesday during the football season, Rodgers comes on and spends about an hour talking about anything that is on his mind. With Rodgers, that’s usually . . . interesting.
Rodgers isn’t the only regular in McAfee’s rotation. During this week, plenty of A-listers in football, sports and entertainment have stopped by his huge stage in the corner of the massive room to yuk it up with him and his crew. They talk, shoot hoops, chant, yell, applaud. It’s hard to miss them.
“I think they know I’m not trying to catch anybody,” he said of why his guests open up to him more than they do through other outlets. “I’m just trying to have a conversation. We’ll point out things that are obviously ridiculous and try to make light of them, but we also are trying to get information. I feel like we are not judging people ever . . .
“People know they are coming on to talk to people who are much dumber than them, so that’s a little bit of a weapon we have to get them to put their guard down. We’re not smarter than they are. We’re not going to run them into a place.”
McAfee hasn’t offered any advice to Rodgers, but he said he’s pulling for him to wind up in Indianapolis with the team McAfee used to play for.
“I hope he ends up with the Colts and I hope we win 10 Super Bowls,” he said with a chuckle. “Sorry, Jets fans, he’s coming to Indianapolis. But a lot of things have to happen to get to that point . . . I just hope he ends up pumped and happy about his life. Who knows when it will all take place?”
McAfee certainly will be among the first.
Tom Rock began covering sports for Newsday in 1996 and became its NFL columnist in 2022. He previously was Newsday's Giants beat writer beginning in 2008.
