When The Pat McAfee Show broadcast live from Steelers training camp on Monday, it felt inevitable that Aaron Rodgers would appear as a guest. And when Aaron Rodgers appears as a guest on The Pat McAfee Show, it feels inevitable that he’d have some comments that made headlines.
On Monday, inevitability went two for two.
Rodgers did appear as a guest, with the first part of his interview airing on ESPN and the rest on YouTube. During that time, Rodgers criticized Dr. Anthony Fauci, who led the United States’ response to the COVID-19 pandemic, for invoking the Fifth Amendment while appearing at a Senate hearing last week.
“I’m gonna plead the Fifth, like that absolute coward, Tony Fauci,” Rodgers said in response to one of McAfee’s first questions.
“Are you kidding me? You got a pardon, and you pleaded over 100 times at [Capitol Hill]? What are you scared of Tony, I thought you were the science? I thought you were, ‘I am science,’ and you get up there, and you can’t answer a question? What are we doing? And how much time did the network spend with that, how much time did they spend on my responses every week, on my vaccination status, on Taylor and Travis’ wedding? Did they do even a minute on Tony Fauci?”
On Tuesday, Fauci’s attorney David Schertler responded, writing in a statement to The Athletic: “Aaron Rodgers doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He should stick to football.”
If Rodgers was genuinely curious as to why Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment, he offered his explanation in his opening statement at the hearing.
“Given Senator [Rand] Paul’s obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this Committee is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words, ‘Behind bars,'” Fauci said.
Steelers coach Mike McCarthy was asked about Rodgers’s comments on Tuesday and largely deflected. “These are grown men with different opinions, there’s no question about that,” he said. “At the end of the day, my job is to keep it about football. Keep the focus on winning. That’s why we’re here.”
The Steelers open the 2026 season at home against the Atlanta Falcons on September 13. Rodgers’s comments might receive an outsized amount of attention right now, but once the actual football starts, McCarthy’s goal to “keep it about football” should be a lot easier. Unless it isn’t.
About Tyler Lauletta
Tyler is a editorial contributor at Awful Announcing, with previous stops at Sports Illustrated and Business Insider during his career covering sports in digital media. He is, begrudgingly, a Truster of the Process and general Philly sports sicko.