Just as when he drops back to pass, Aaron Rodgers scans the world around him and sees enemies everywhere. Over the past four years, The Pat McAfee Show, a streaming sensation that’s recently found a home on ESPN, has provided a forum for the New York Jets quarterback to settle scores and single out other targets for offense – not least his grudge against Jimmy Kimmel.
Rodgers’s three-year-old feud with Kimmel – which began with the talkshow host slamming Rodgers, a stubborn vaccine skeptic, after he tested positive for Covid – reached a troubling inflection point last week when Rodgers appeared on McAfee’s show and implied the comedian was “nervous” about being linked to Jeffrey Epstein. The quarterback pledged to “pop a bottle of something” if Kimmel’s name surfaced in the recent release of documents related to the disgraced financier.
