Aaron Rodgers attempts to teach us a lot of things. But if there’s anything we’ve learned about Aaron Rodgers in recent years, it’s that he needs all eyes on him, all the time.
Unfortunately for Rodgers, during his regular Tuesday segment on The Pat McAfee Show this week, he lost a lot of those eyes for about 12 minutes, thanks to a technical issue. The issue occurred after Rodgers, who previously dressed up as Rambo, John Wick, and Nick Cage in Con Air, joked that he celebrated Halloween as a “spike protein” this year. Interestingly, for many people who were watching Rodgers on cable, ESPN’s feed of The Pat McAfee Show went dark immediately after his latest Covid quip.
Maybe ESPN had enough of Aaron Rodgers’ vax commentary? pic.twitter.com/jNCFwVDJbh
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) October 31, 2023
The outage was not experienced by those who were streaming the show, watching on YouTube, or YouTube TV. But for many of McAfee’s viewers who were watching the show linearly on ESPN, the timing of the glitch occurring after Rodgers said “spike protein” was certainly conspicuous.
After they signed off ESPN for the day, McAfee and his cast of contributors accused Awful Announcing of “fake news” and having an agenda against the show for sharing video of the outage. But there was no agenda, for many people watching on cable, Aaron Rodgers Tuesday went dark for 12 notable minutes. And count Aaron Rodgers as one of the people who were curious upon learning about the lengthy technical issue.
Wednesday afternoon, J.J. Watt joined The Pat McAfee Show and questioned the curious timing of Tuesday’s outage on cable.
Don’t impede Aaron Rodgers’ audience pic.twitter.com/BE9BgXDz2L
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 3, 2023
“One provider. That’s fake news,” McAfee quickly told Watt. “Don’t listen to everything ML Football says on the internet [ML Football sensationalized Awful Announcing’s video of the technical issue]. Can’t do that. That was only one provider. But Aaron did text me. He was like, ‘Heard we got cut off? Heard we got cut off? They scared? The four-time MVP, hippie guy saying some stuff? Oh, must have hit too close to home.’
“We’ve been told it was only one provider. And we don’t know if it was Connor Stalion’s rogue agent at that provider kinda hitting it,” McAfee joked. “Or if it was just technical difficulties at the exact same time. But it was not ESPN, from what I’ve been told.”
Despite the odd timing of the glitch, you’d have to be a conspiracy theorist to believe someone at ESPN heard the words “spike protein” and ran to pull the plug on Rodgers’ segment. But when there’s a conspiracy on the loose, expect Rodgers’ antennas to perk up.
