Mike Ryan wants Boomer Esiason to “quit being a p*ssy” and say what he means. Gregg Giannotti wishes Boomer Esiason would say less.
After hearing Esiason suggest Olympic athletes should just “pipe down” and “respect the flag” while representing the United States at the Winter Games, Ryan exploded over the shut up and skate take. Despite Esiason’s opinion seeming clear, The Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz co-host accused the former NFL MVP of hiding behind “MAGA-coded bullsh*t.”
“Say what you mean. Say it with your chest, you chicken sh*t,” Ryan ranted during Thursday’s Le Batard Show. “Quit being a p*ssy, Boomer Esiason. Put your name to it. Say what you f*cking mean!”
Esiason happened to be off Friday morning, meaning he was unable to respond. But Esiason’s WFAN co-host Gregg Giannotti heard Ryan’s rant, and thought it was misinformed.
“What it seemed like to me was this is a lot of misguided anger…I sit next to Boomer five days a week, four hours a day. I wish he would say what he meant less, to be honest with you.” Gregg Giannotti responds to Mike Ryan rant on Boomer Esiason https://t.co/ocaZWVHH3N pic.twitter.com/EZmmditAOb
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) February 13, 2026
“What it seemed like to me was this is a lot of misguided anger,” Giannotti said to Jerry Recco. “That this guy is very angry politically about things that are going on, maybe there’s people in his life or others that he has stayed silent about, but then this Boomer thing comes across his plate and he all of a sudden just explodes and all of the things that were bubbling up in him about whoever that he’s been annoyed with comes out and the direction of it all goes to Boomer.”
Giannotti continued to explain that based on Ryan’s rant, it’s clear he’s not familiar with WFAN’s morning show or Esiason’s unfiltered radio personality. Because for nearly two decades, Esiason has had no issue saying what he means without any coded language.
“I sit next to Boomer five days a week, four hours a day. I wish he would say what he meant less to be honest with you,” Giannotti said. “So, you don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m never ever going to tell Boomer stop doing this or that. But there are times where he’ll jam politics into conversations that I’m like, ‘that was unnecessary’ and now I got to find a way out of it, but that’s what he wants to do, he’s earned that ability to say all of these things that he wants with this platform.”
Esiason’s ‘shut up and skate’ take probably doesn’t fall into that category because Giannotti welcomed that conversation by asking his co-host if Team USA’s figure skating team is “happy to represent America?” But usually, when Esiason drops a political take or reference, he often does it without needing much encouragement.
“But to sit here and say that he is on here giving you some sort of coded message because he’s afraid to say what he wants and he’s a p-word, is just completely misinformed,” Giannotti pushed back, “He’s just misguided, he just doesn’t have the information. He’s just screaming about whatever that he’s annoyed about and he’s putting Boomer in a category that he’s not in.”
Giannotti also claimed he felt the urge to defend Esiason because when you consider The Boomer Esiason Foundation and his resume of off-the-field accomplishments, he doesn’t deserve to be minimized or disrespected with name-calling.
Esiason telling Olympic athletes to “pipe down” and “respect the flag” in the wake of freestyle skier Hunter Hess admitting he has “mixed emotions” about representing the United States was going to garner warranted pushback. But Esiason didn’t need to say it louder. His opinion was, and usually is, made very clear.
After Giannotti called Ryan’s response “misguided,” however, the Le Batard Show personality wrote a social media post explaining some of the emotion behind his rant.
— Mike Ryan (Ruiz) 🙌🏽 (@MichaelRyanRuiz) February 13, 2026
“If the only time you step into this conversation is to scold people for speaking out, then not only are you a coward… YOU are part of the problem,” Ryan wrote.