Profile: Aaron Rodgers

Profile: Aaron Rodgers November 22, 2007 | 10:30 AM This is an interesting article from USA Today profiling the waiting game that Aaron Rodgers has been doing since being drafted. And below is sort of a "web extra" from what they have termed Mission: NFL. It seems to be a lot less formal that what appears in the pages of the newspaper, but no less entertaining to fans. When the Packers drafted quarterback Aaron Rodgers No. 24 overall in 2005, Brett Favre was 35. Rodgers probably figured to sit a couple of years and be the starter this season. He figured wrong. Favre, now 38, is having a resurgent season, second the league in passing yards (2,975) and ranking fourth in passer rating (98.6). He's also the NFL record-holder for consecutive quarterback starts. Bad luck for Rodgers, but he's adjusted to the situation. In the third year of a five-year contract, he may never play for Green Bay before his deal runs out. But if that day does come, he wants to be ready. So he's working to gain his teammates' trust. "As a quarterback, you've got to have guys who want to play for you," he says. "To do that you have to build relationships, so I'm big on giving guys nicknames. It's a great way to make a connection." Because 6-4, 210-pound wide receiver Ruvell Martin is long and lanky, Rodgers has dubbed him "Gumby." Others have taken to calling Martin "Rooster" or "Rubu." "But I still call him 'Gumby,'" Rodgers says. Martin is one of Rodgers' closest friends on the team. Tackle Mark Tauscher is "Piggy." Rodgers can't quite remember how that one came about, but he believes it happened during a summertime tailgate tour for charity. Other nicknames are straight forward; he'll take the first initial of their first name and combine it with the first three letters of their last name. So he would be "A-Rod," Charles Woodson would be "C-Wood," and so on. Rodgers also has fun with his facial hair. Last year, he grew a 1970s-style mustache, "a Chuck Norris-Sam Elliott thing," he says. This year, he decided to go for broke. Growing the mustache was no problem "it's a gift," he says but the rest of his beard took longer to fill out. By the third week of training camp, he had a full beard and plotted his strategy: after a week of the full beard, he shaved his chin, leaving the sideburns merged into the beard and mustache, "for a Civil War look," he says. The third week he shaved the sideburns for a FuManchu look that he says was "definitely a big hit." (By the way, I know there's a space in FuManchu. But our website won't let me use the first two letters by themselves. In Web-ese, it's taboo; you can probably figure out why.) The last week, he returned to the old-standby 1970s mustache. "My brother would get calls from people who were a little confused," Rodgers says of his different looks. "They'd say, 'What's wrong with your boy? What's he doing?' But I was never taking it seriously. It was just a way to make my teammates laugh." Favre wouldn't join Rodgers in his facial hair stunt, but the two are getting along much better these days. At the time Green Bay drafted Rogers, Favre made at least one thing clear: it wasn't his job to serve as a mentor. What's more, he probably didn't appreciate the virtual nudge that the selection implied. "That first year," Rodgers says, "we were more teammates than friends." Gannett's people in Green Bay tell me Rodgers didn't even have Favre's cell phone number. But now the two arrive in meetings together joking, laughing and seeing who can produce the loudest bodily noises. Although Rodgers considers himself no slouch in this department, he admits Favre has no peer. One day Rodgers was in the hallway with quarterbacks coach Tom Clements when they hard a tremendous belch from some 40 yards away. "That HAS to be Favre," Clements said. Washington quarterback Mark Brunell, who backed up Favre from 1993-94, can verify Favre's varied sound-producing skills. "I only wish I had just heard them," he laughs, "instead of smelled them." Nicole