In what was not a shock to anyone, Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers was not at mandatory minicamp on Tuesday as first reported by ESPN’s Adam Schefter on Monday. It has been a while since anyone has heard from Rodgers, but the last one who did was former ESPN personality Kenny Mayne.
Rodgers, who is a good friend of Mayne’s, appeared on the ESPN legend’s last SportsCenter a couple weeks back. On this week’s episode of The Adam Schefter Podcast, Mayne talked about the now famous interview.
“It was a weird position to be in and then you add in the weight of the ESPN bosses, ‘hey we know it is your last day, but can you get some f**n Aaron Rodgers questions for us to run them on SportsCenter?'” Mayne joked. “I sent him a note. I said we are not planning anything, just be prepared for everything. I’m not going to screw him over when he’s doing me a nicety of that’s a pretty big name to get on your final show. Aaron didn’t complain afterwards. He wrote something funny. He wasn’t offended and I think he wants to answer some things seriously. We kind of did it all in my opinion. I did what I wanted to do. It was my last show. He said what he said. I don’t know what’s going to happen, I have no idea.”
During the conversation with Schefter, Mayne said that he has no idea what’s really going on with Rodgers and has never asked him about it privately nor did he know anything other than rumors when the news Rodgers reportedly wanted out was reported the night of the NFL Draft. He knew that regardless of what he asked, he wouldn’t get Rodgers to tell him everything.
“I told people before and after I can be as straight as can be, I can be as silly as can be, somewhere in between, which I probably was. He’s going to answer how he wants to answer. No one can beat the information out of anyone. I can’t make Aaron tell me precisely what he’s thinking and what he’s exactly going to do and how he thinks it is going to turn out. He was kind of just doing the long, philosophical answer of people vs. institutions and I tend to agree with his point.”
Of course, what might be more famous than Rodgers’ thoughts on his current situation in that interview was the final question Mayne asked where he joked about getting into cryptocurrency. Schefter said it might have been “the single-greatest last question that I’ve heard asked of anybody ever.”
Mayne did not prepare the quarterback for the joke either and mentioned how he was doing it more to help him than for the actual show itself:
“I daydreamed about that a day or two before,” Mayne said. “I knew that it would be a funny way to end it, but I didn’t write it down and I almost forgot to do it. All of those interviews, there were no scripts or prompters. I knew ahead of time ‘hey I want to hit these four things and you see where the interview goes. At the very end, it hit me to do that thing. As he is wrapping up, I pretend like we’re done. I referenced the last time I interviewed him and did the big joke at the end. He didn’t know it was coming for sure. That was a genuine reaction. I was doing it more for him than the room. I didn’t think they would run it out. They were like we had to run this.”
While Mayne said some people can criticize him for not addressing the trade request enough, he did the interview the way he wanted to do it and for someone’s final show in a great career, that’s all a person could ask for.
