The greg hill show: They Said It: McAfee's odd exchange with Robert Kraft on Belichick's future
Pat McAfee has taken some heat over the last couple of days for the comments he made to Patriots owner Robert Kraft during Saturday's episode of College GameDay.
With Foxborough playing host to the 124th Army-Navy game, ESPN sent their flagship college football program to Foxborough to capture the day, and had both Kraft and head coach Bill Belichick as guests on the show.
"We like to win," Kraft told the dais when asked about the state of his football team. "So we want to do everything we can to get our team back so we can be winning."
"I don’t envy your position, what’s about to happen," McAfee responded. "We all know. We don’t have to ask."
Kraft didn't say anything back, and instead just smiled and shook his hand.
Since Saturday, many have suggested that the former punter was trying to corner New England's owner into saying something he didn't want to about Belichick's job security, or that he was trying to have a 'gotcha' moment live on air. On Monday's edition of The Pat McAfee Show, McAfee responded to the criticism, saying that wasn't the case at all:
"At the end," he explained. "I think they said, 'Anybody else have anything?' and I'm like, 'I do not envy your position', is what I said to him. I'm not going to ask the question. It's not about that, we all know what I'm talking about. But I don't envy your position."
"And everybody in New England," McAfee continued. "And I understand, I guess, from the New England perspective, why they did this. People were saying I ambushed Robert Kraft. I didn't even ask a question. They said I ambushed him with that. Then we shook hands, and they said, 'Pat just told Robert Kraft that he's going to fire Bill Belichick'. I did not say that at all. What I was talking about, for the first time in like 20 years, is he going to extend Bill Belichick? Is he going to move on from Bill Belichick? How about the quarterback position? What are you going to do there? Like, I don't envy his position at all. He's the man who owned and operated the greatest dynasty in sports history. The most consistent dynasty. He even said it he said, 'Bill's been with us for 24 years'."
"So when I said I don't envy your position, everybody in Boston was like, 'He just told Robert Kraft he has to fire Bill'. I was like, yo, you said that. I was talking about all of the other- maybe that's one of them, maybe that's certainly one of the outcomes. Which leads me even more to say I don't envy his position, because you heard what I just said about Bill Belichick. That's how I feel about Bill Belichick."
The internet just built a narrative really quickly about what I said." McAfee finished. "So I-- after I listened to it back, my intent was that. It was nothing else, so. I just would like to let everybody know that I was not disrespecting Robert Kraft. It was the complete opposite of that. It was like, massive respect for everything and you have a tough position right now."
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