Going on this, it's the insecurities too which is where that stemmed from. Opie's lack of humor never bothered me at all to be honest. It didn't hurt to have someone in the room doing what he was there to do IN THEORY. Plus there were some times when he did well with it. One that comes to mind is Dennis Leary getting outed by Louis C.K. for joke stealing.
The whole room was so caught up in making jokes, building on others jokes, laughing and ball busting etc that we almost never got to hear the story from CK. At some point a bit after Louis mentioned the joke stealing and they had gone off the rail joking around, Opie said "Wait lets go back a minute I want to hear that story about Leary" and it brought it back to Louis telling the story which became a classic exposing of Leary moment.
The problem was Opie had so much insecurity that it caused him to over-do that type of thing wayyy too much. He started believing and caring way too much about the old message boards bringing up his unfunniness that he started to believe he needed to be on an equal level of funny as the rest of the cohosts/comedian rotation. Yet he's not a comedian, never was a comedian, and shouldn't try to then become one when surrounded by a few of the funniest comedians we had coming up in that era.
It would be like a guy doing football interviews with John Elway, Dan Marino, Steve Young, Jim Kelly, and the guy has never played football. The QBs start talking about football theory and the interviewer would start chiming in about his own theory and analysis of players and teams his own opinions on what it's like to play in the NFL etc. No... ask the questions, drive the conversation only when it hits a lull, but DO NOT start giving your own theory in the mix, it's not what you're there to do, you brought in the top QBs to give their analysis, not trade off with them on your own.
Worse than that... imagine if this football interviewer then started asking the QBs what they thought of his theories, if they were pretty good, and turn to the camera and yell into it saying SEE! John Elway thinks my analysis is GOOD... EAT THAT! and then turn back to Elway to explain that the viewers who watch the show criticize him for not having good insight on the NFL.
Opie did well during intern drama and staff infighting in general but a combination of his ego and his insecurities totally buried him when comedians and funny people were doing their thing in the studio. That shit completely sunk him