On Thursday, the station and Esiason had made some sense of what had happened and, with Carton suspended from the show, former NFL quarterback Phil Simms filled in with Esiason, who admitted “it’s all shocking.”

“Maybe our point guard’s not here, but we’re going to continue to do it and I’m going to bring my friends in here until we find a permanent replacement, if in fact that’s where this is going to take us,” Esiason said. “But I just want people to know out there, that I love my partner for 10 years. I still love my partner. I love his family. I love his kids. And I am praying every single day, you know, that he lands on his feet, that they land on their feet. And there’s nothing worse than having a family go through what they have to go through now.”

Carton and Esiason, a former NFL quarterback, partnered up on the show in 2007, replacing Don Imus.

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“As you can imagine, my phone blew up as everybody was finding out what was going on and everybody read the complaint and everything else, just like I did for the first time,” Esiason said. “It’s shocking; it’s all shocking. But the people that reached out to me on Twitter, the people that reached out to me personally, the people that were sending emails and everything else, just blew me away.”