Over the weekend Pat McAfee Show cohost A.J. Hawk on ESPN suffered through extreme eye pain after his son, Axel, scratched him. After trying to ignore it, Hawk saw a doctor and discovered Axel had scratched off a decent chunk of Hawk’s cornea.
In the second hour of PMS on Monday, the Green Bay Packers and Ohio State legend flashed a gnarly eye patch and explained the misery he dealt with at the hands of his young son.
“I was hoping you guys might not notice, but I figured it might be a bit of a distraction today,” Hawk joked. “Not a long story. I bent down to pick up Axel, he threw his arms up so fast his thumb went about six inches deep into my eyeball. And his nail chopped off part of my eye, I guess.
“I tried to fight through it, tried to figure out. I dropped my kids off at school and then went to the doctor and he said, ‘A third of your cornea is gone, there’s a big divot out of there.'”
https://twitter.com/awfulannouncing/status/1724130707071734122
Hawk went on to explain he hopes to only have to wear the eye patch for one day, but has no idea what the recovery might look like.
“I’m not sure of anything right now,” Hawk added. “But this is going to be great.”
Hawk could barely open his eye and dealt with burning and watering in it all weekend. At his kid’s flag football game, the other parents worried Hawk was getting overly competitive.
And most hilariously, the doctor helping Hawk asked him after the diagnosis whether he “had to be seen in public” on Monday. Uh…yes.
It only took a couple minutes before AJ Hawk's injury opened the floodgates for big head jokes pic.twitter.com/jGlhCd1Mcl
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) November 13, 2023
In typical PMS fashion, about two minutes into the horror story, it was time to make fun of Hawk’s big head.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.