Nick Wright REACTS to Aaron Rodgers' comments on Pat McAfee show

**Nick Wright** (0:05)
Welcome in What's Wright? with Nick Wright episode 488, our Friday episode that I always tell you guys we record on Thursdays. So if between now and when you guys hear this, there's crazy breaking news, my apologies. We won't have it in today's episode. The last time we did something like this between when we recorded the episodes and when you guys heard them, the breaking news was LeBron James to the Sixers. I was already out of the country. I don't think that's going to happen again. Today's show is brought to you as always by our friends at Boost Mobile. I don't even think on Thursday's episode I mentioned this one time, but it does help us out if you subscribe to the show. Also, just a reminder, next week we will bring to you your regularly scheduled episodes. Then we are off for two weeks, so if you have some ideas for what we might populate your podcast feeds with while we are off, Demonsay also will be back next week, done with his final piece of his paternity leave, so we will have the full crew back with us next week. On today's show, we are going to do four separate things. We are not doing a mail bag today. Four separate topics that are, you know, it is actually kind of three sports, one non-sport. The sports we are going to discuss at some point are baseball, international soccer, the pro football hall of fame, and we are going to start the show. There is no straight-to-voicemail broadcast about our friends on Boost Mobile as there never is on Fridays. We are going to start the show with a little bit on broadcasting accepted norms, I guess, at this point in relation to the Rodgers' latest appearance on Pat McAfee. Now, I don't think, in fact, I know nothing I have planned here over the next ten minutes or so when we're discussing this. To me, it qualifies as even quasi-political, that is not the piece of this, that I am interested in for our purposes. It certainly, however, is not X's No Sports stuff. And I'm saying that on the front end for a reason that will make more sense as we get to the back end of it, because it's one of my kind of broadcasting notes on it. But Rodgers went on McAfee and decided to do a bit of the greatest hits. And it was fresh off Dr. Anthony Fauci's appearance for Congress, where he pled the fifth and didn't want to talk to them. And so Rodgers did something similar to what Vic Fangio did from the Eagles podium, which is decide this was the right time and the place to discuss how COVID was dealt with and Dr. Fauci from five, six years ago. Fine. Soviet.
A few things on Rodgers before we get to what I think is the most interesting piece of this, but I just want to do this on the front end. Because I have said this before, but I want to reiterate it here.
Aaron Rodgers has created an alternate universe where he was the only athlete who decided not to get the vaccine and that he paid a massive price for it. When that is not at all what happened.
Aaron Rodgers, at least in most media circles, was not heavily criticized at all for and listen to the words I'm saying here, the decision not to get the vaccine because unlike in the NBA, where if you didn't get the vaccine, there were real penalties like Kyrie. It wasn't really an NBA thing as much as it was a New York City thing where Kyrie couldn't play home games with the Nets because of the city regulations. That wasn't an NBA rule because he was allowed to play road games. That whole thing was very weird.
In the NFL, a lot of guys, we still don't know who all did and didn't get the vaccine. We kind of could piece together if you remember the COVID times. There were different rules as far as if you tested positive, what the protocol was as far as how much time you had to miss and what the rules were as far as I think masking and other things, whether you were vaccinated or not. And because of that, people piece together, oh, I don't think Lamar got the vaccine. There were some other quarterbacks. There were a bunch of players that didn't get it. And you only knew about it because their COVID protocol was different than someone else's COVID protocol. Again, it is 2026 I am not interested in relitigating any of those things. The only reason I even bring any of that up is because Aaron has created, it feels to me, this fake universe of martyrdom where he took a stand no one else was willing to take and he paid heavy price for it. It's not what fucking happened. Aaron got criticized because he lied without directly lying, knew he was doing it, and people didn't like that. That instead of having the courage of his convictions, he has now, six years ago, when in the moment he could have as a league MVP, as one of the greatest players ever, took this stand that he felt was a brave, important, thoughtful stand that he thought could save lives, all these things. He instead, passed the buck, did a little play on words, yeah, I've been immunized, and then kept that ruse running until he got caught. That's what he was criticized for. He then got more and more criticized, not for a decision that was not at all incredibly out of the mainstream to choose not to get vaccinated. He got more and more criticized, because he wouldn't stop talking about this years later, and then kept upping the ante on his kooky, conspiratorial stuff when he tried to bring Jimmy Kimmel into the Epstein List, and the other nonsense he tried to peddle us, or have his friends in the media peddle us about how he's playing safety for the scout team, and got an interception for the Jets, when he was much removed from the Achilles, and how he might come back within the same season, and just all this mouth vomit bullshit that people got sick of. To go on top of the fact that he didn't seem to be a very good leader, a lot of pointing fingers instead of pointing thumbs, all of those reasons are why he got, he went from, I think, relatively popular to relatively unpopular, and he has convinced himself, and is I think trying to convince others, oh no, it's only because I didn't get the vaccine. Novak Djokovic didn't get the vaccine. Now you can, the only reason I bring that up, you can say it's unfair that he had to miss tournaments, that if you want to argue whether or not those regulations were right or wrong, and if you think that your reading of Dr. Fauci pleading the fifth is evidence, I am not certainly in this setting, and maybe in any setting, really interested in having any of those debates. And if folks think that's because I think that I'm on the wrong side of it, you're wrong, I'm just, I'm not interested in it. But those are, those are legitimate debates, and if people are interested in having them, they should have it. Whether or not they should be having them on ESPN at 1230 in the afternoon is a different discussion, which brings me to where I really wanted to go with this, but I did just want to set the record straight on the first, first of all, that Aaron Rodgers, who lack of personal accountability has become an absolute trademark of the last five years of his career up to and including, I mean, it was so much disingenuous bullshit that everybody, remember this one? Everybody knows you got to FaceTime me. I don't have phone service. I was 90% retired. And then I would like, there was just so much obvious bullshit that he just became for a lot of us a non-credible person. And instead of taking any accountability for any of that, he's like, nope, I just bravely wouldn't get that toxic shot. And now I've been proven right and you all owe me an apology. It's just such a nonsense.