The Mad Dog could take or leave The GOAT.

On Wednesday’s edition of “First Take,” Russo was in a discussion with Stephen A. Smith, Molly Qerim and Kimberley Martin about Tom Brady’s most recent episode of his weekly show, “Let’s Go,” on SiriusXM. Russo interjected that this show airs on Mad Dog Radio — the station named after him — but revealed he wasn’t originally in favor of booking it.

“I didn’t make the decision to put him on Mad Dog Radio but he’s on Mad Dog Radio,” Russo said.

Qerim deadpanned: “A lot of people turn down Tom Brady.”

“I wanted to!” Russo protested.

After Qerim told him to “stop lying,” Smith jumped in: “Molly, he’s telling the absolute truth. He’s the only one. He actually was like, ‘Why do we need to have them?’”

At this point, the subject changed, but it’s actually a realistic scenario that Russo would have preferred standard sports talk fare on the airwaves over star athletes having control of the agenda. The spots make news, but Russo probably does not actually find the underlying content that interesting.

Earlier in the show, he had railed about Aaron Rodgers’ weekly spots on “The Pat McAfee Show.” McAfee’s program previously aired on Mad Dog Radio, but recently departed the station.

“Every Tuesday after he loses, I have to go listen to him talk for 25 minutes, like he’s on the [psychologist’s] couch. It drives me crazy!” Russo said of Rodgers. “Pipe down and play football!”

Smith saw the humor in the situation.

“Only Mad Dog Russo would do this — I will remind you that even though Pat McAfee is gone now and he’s got his own YouTube channel and he’s doing is own thing, the last two years that we’ve seen Rodgers on this show it was on Mad Dog Radio!” Smith said.

“To be consistent, he was killing [Rodgers] while he was on the channel! Only ‘Mad Dog’ Russo would do that. The ratings, the revenue — you’re killing your own product! Only Mad Dog Russo could get away with that.”