Boomer Esiason continues to equivocate about athletes who take political stands, and it has once again drawn the ire of longtime Dan Le Batard Show producer Mike Ryan.
Early on Tuesday morning, Esiason sounded off during his WFAN show about the online dispute between young New York Giants stars Jaxson Dart and Abdul Carter, which came after Dart introduced President Donald Trump at a rally in New York over the weekend. In response, Carter questioned Dart’s judgment in a post on X.
That led Esiason to paint Carter as the instigator of the drama, challenging Carter’s maturity and claiming he was not a “man.” In stark contrast, Esiason defended Dart taking a once-in-a-lifetime “opportunity,” which he said was not an “error.”
The seeming hypocrisy of Esiason’s stance was not lost on Ryan, who clashed with Esiason earlier this year when Esiason offered a similarly confusing take on Olympian Hunter Hess. After Hess admitted during the Milan-Cortina games this past winter that he was “conflicted” over representing the U.S., Esiason argued Olympic athletes should “pipe down” and “respect everything that’s going on.”
“He is there because he is the quarterback of the New York Giants, he’s not just some guy,” Ryan said Tuesday on the Le Batard Show. “He has mainstream approval, and he has just put all his teammates in this situation. That is a distraction, that he caused. Don’t go at the person that’s reaction to the distraction. You don’t hear from Abdul Cart this weekend if Jaxson Dart doesn’t do that.”
What is Jaxson Dart doing? pic.twitter.com/GzummMfiUF
— Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz (@LeBatardShow) May 26, 2026
While Ryan did not directly address the inconsistency in Esiason’s support of Dart while hammering someone like Hess, he pointed out that Dart is creating an arguably even bigger distraction coming from within the NFL, and is certainly not piping down. Then, Ryan called Esiason out directly over his defense of Dart’s actions.
“You’re literally doing what Boomer Esiason doesn’t want you to do, and yet Boomer Esiason is defending your actions now,” Ryan said. “Because Abdul Carter reacted to it. This is bonkers. He’s doing the thing that Boomer doesn’t want him to do, and Boomer is defending him!”
The situation here is unlikely to change many listeners’ opinions given the obvious political leanings of each side. However, Esiason has become so inconsistent on the topic of athlete activism during the second Trump administration that it was bound to come back to bite him.
Unfortunately, rather than moving the conversation forward, debates like this are largely re-runs of the same conversations that happened when athletes stood up to Trump during his first term, only with the roles reversed. Perhaps the more consequential argument made from the Le Batard Show while discussing Dart was the request that New York media give Dart an open forum to explain his support for Trump. That, at least, would give the media and fans something more consequential to chew on.
Similarly, unless Esiason wants to keep walking into traps where his own words can be used against him, it would bode well for him to clearly state what he believes about Trump and athletes’ relationship to him as well.
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.