How Pat McAfee Explained Robert Kraft Comment On ‘GameDay’

Pat McAfee claimed he was not drawing any conclusions about Bill Belichick’s job security during Robert Kraft’s “College GameDay” interview.

The NFL punter-turned-media personality made headlines over the weekend when he appeared to insinuate that Kraft was on the verge of firing Belichick as New England Patriots head coach.

“I don’t envy your position, what’s about to happen,” McAfee told Kraft after the Patriots owner expressed his desire to return New England to its winning ways. “We all know. We don’t have to ask.”

Speaking Monday on his daily ESPN show, McAfee insisted he was referring to the difficult choices Kraft will have to make after the Patriots’ worst season in decades. The team might end up parting ways with Belichick, but McAfee said his comment shouldn’t be taken as confirmation that such a change is coming.

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McAfee also said he was not attempting to “ambush” Kraft, who did not verbally respond to his remark but shook McAfee’s hand.

“At the end (of the segment), I think they said, ‘Anybody else have anything?’ And I’m like, ‘I do not envy your position,’ is what I said to (Kraft),” McAfee explained on “The Pat McAfee Show.” “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 — 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, and then we shook hands. 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? 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. … I didn’t say Robert Kraft is firing Bill Belichick. Y’all are saying that. I was just saying I don’t envy what you have to do. 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.”

The 3-10 Patriots will host the 8-5 Kansas City Chiefs this Sunday at Gillette Stadium.