ESPN NFL analyst Dan Orlovsky walked into Friday’s “First Take” ready to break down everything wrong with the Los Angeles Rams’ season-opening loss. Instead, one word quickly turned him into the punchline when ESPN’s Stephen A. Smith interrupted him.

“What the fudge are you doing? Like, what are you doing?” Orlovsky said, clearly frustrated, before trying to get back to his point about the pass rush getting home too quickly.

“I do have a favor to ask you,” Smith said on the show, in a clip posted by Awful Announcing. “Could you stop using that word ‘fudge’ on TV? Number one is corny as hell, but number two, and most importantly, it might compel one to slip up one day and say the other F word. And we don’t want to do that. Come up with something different than fudge.”

Orlovsky was a little thrown off by the interruption, taking a few seconds to recoup. At the end of it all, he just smiled in confusion, dismissing that jab from Smith.

The word wasn’t completely out of character for Dan Orlovsky. He’s leaned on the word as his go-to stand-in for cursing on live television for years, well before Friday’s exchange. Back in 2022, Orlovsky was already using “fudge” during one of his blunt critiques on ESPN’s Get Up. Talking about then-New York Jets quarterback Zach Wilson, he told him to “grow the fudge up” and went after the young QB for playing with too much “ego,” “carelessness,” and “recklessness.”

More recently, during the 2026 NFL Draft on The Pat McAfee Show, Orlovsky jumped out of his chair after the Los Angeles Rams took Alabama quarterback Ty Simpson at No. 13, shouting, “Fudge yes, dude.” He had been pushing for Simpson during the draft process (Fernando Mendoza was never the better quarterback in his eyes), so the reaction was very much in character.

There is actually a reason to believe Orlovsky knows exactly what he is doing when he uses it. In an April interview after that draft moment, he acknowledged that he is conscious of being on camera and said he would have used the actual profanity in a less public setting.

“If I was just with Pat and the boys, I may have. I’m aware I’m on camera. I don’t know if my sons are gonna see that clip. So, I’m always conscious of that,” Orlovsky said.

Perhaps it’s for the best that he substitutes the curse with “fudge.” Bussin’ With The Boys took a dig at Orlovsky in a 30-second YouTube clip that captured him using the word five times in that span. The clip was hilariously titled, “Dan Orlovsky Has A Serious Cussing Problem.”

The football context behind Friday’s outburst was real, even if it got buried under the word policing. Garrett, the centerpiece of the Rams’ offseason push to strengthen their pass rush, had a quiet Los Angeles debut with zero tackles. He later acknowledged that his knee was not fully healthy and called it the “worst version of myself” he had put out there.

Quarterback Matthew Stafford struggled too, finishing 15-of-25 for 155 yards and an interception. The Rams reached the San Francisco 1-yard line in the third quarter, but Stafford’s fourth-down sneak was phenomenally stopped short, giving the 49ers possession and keeping Los Angeles from covering the deficit. The offense managed only one rushing touchdown, and the 49ers’ defense held the Rams to 290 total yards.

“They outplayed us in every facet,” Head coach Sean McVay said. “I didn’t do nearly a good enough job. This was a humbling day for us. This will only define us if we allow it.”

The “fudge” exchange may have stolen the spotlight, but Orlovsky’s original point was about a Rams team that had far bigger problems to fix. By the end of the segment, the joke had gone viral, while the football breakdown that started it all was left waiting in the background.