Pat McAfee Retired In Style By Trashing Ryan Grigson

Former Indianapolis Colts punter Pat McAfee made headlines when he abruptly chose to retire at the age of 29, widely considered the best in football.

It was never clear what spurred him towards the decision. Clearly, he’d gotten fed up with the Colts organization and it became apparent that former GM Ryan Grigson was the root cause of it. McAfee practically threw a party when he got fired in 2017. Yet even then McAfee remained quiet about the specifics. Either he felt it wasn’t the time or just wanted to be the bigger man and not kick Grigson when he was down.

It’s been over a year now and things seem to have calmed. The Colts are cleaning up the mess their former GM left behind. Andrew Luck is finally healthy and Grigson has moved on to new ventures elsewhere. Combined with a recent development regarding his partnership with Barstool Sports, McAfee felt it might be time to tell the full story of what happened.

On Monday morning, September 4th he went on his podcast and explained how a feeling of disrespect had developed with the business people at Barstool. This led to his decision to end that relationship. It surprised him how similar of a feeling he had to what happened in Indianapolis. The meeting that spurred his decision to walk away from football.

Fight over Instagram post led to blow up between McAfee and Grigson

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It all began over a post McAfee put on Instagram. The punter had already been fined a few times before for such actions by Grigson and it seemed the GMs’ anger was starting to boil over from repeated offenses. So he was going to turn up the heat and make sure he got the message across that either the posting would stop or he’d start losing a lot more money.

What he probably hadn’t counted on was how prepared the Pro Bowler was to snap right back.

"“He pulls out my contract, opens it up, goes to a clause. ‘Since this isn’t your first offense, I can fine you a game check for this,’” McAfee recalled Grigson saying. “You only get 17 game checks in your entire salary, so if you want to look up what that was, it was $100,000 almost. I said, ‘For what?’ He said, ‘Is that a football room?’ I said, ‘Well the title is an equipment room. There’s footballs in there I guess.’ He goes, ‘Why do you have to be such a smartass? I can fine you anything I want. This is why we’re losing.’ This is why we lost to the Steelers, he tells me.”“I said, ‘You paid a guy $140 million and you can’t keep him healthy,” McAfee said. “Your offensive line is swiss cheese. He’s blown out his shoulder three times, and you’re worried about this (expletive)?’ He goes, ‘What did you just say to me?’ I go, ‘Oh yeah, I’m the best in the game at what I do. I wish you would do the same.” This is a moment he did not expect. He goes, ‘You’re going to walk into my office and disrespect me?’ I go, ‘You called me in here.’ He said, ‘I’m going to fine you a whole game check.’ I said, ‘Cool bro,’ and literally walked out of his office. As I walk out, he gives me the, ‘Get out of my office.’ I go, ‘Already walking out.’”"

The game in question was a 28-7 loss to the Steelers. It was the one game of that season Andrew Luck missed, nursing a persistent shoulder problem. McAfee wasn’t wrong. Since his rookie year in 2012, Luck had been sacked 156 times in 70 games. That’s an average of over two sacks per game. Far less than ideal for a franchise quarterback. Perhaps what infuriated Grigson so much was that the punter was right and hadn’t been afraid to say it.

McAfee retired at the end of the season, right around the same time Grigson was fired by the Colts. Poetic justice in his mind.

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