Pittsburgh (AP) – Aaron Rodgers is located in the corner of a largely empty changing room by Pittsburgh Steelers in a accidental afternoon at the late training camp.
The day could be over, but the oldest active NFL player is not in a hurry.
The four -time MVP gets up and goes to a nearby trash can, which is happening in front of the rookie defensive Tackle Yahya Black.
Rodgers turns to Black, who was changed by the Green Bay Packers two days before Rodgers 3 days ago 20 years ago, and begins to chat.
Your short exchange is inaudible. Black laughter is not.
Rodgers turns back to his seat and bumps down. He discovers Mason Rudolph – who once dreamed of sitting on the deep card, as Rodgers has for years, but now in the not exactly unpleasant purgatory of the career backup – from the corner of the eye.
Another short chat. Another laugh.
Mason McCormick, who grew up in South Dakota as a recruit with zero star and this season on an offensive line with the protection of a 41-year-old quarterback that is not moving as before. Another spirited back and forth.
Even more laugh.
It was that of Rodgers' for the first day with the club in early June. Not long after signing a one -year contract with the steelers after months “does he or not he?” In the speculation, Rodgers asked his new teammates to put everything they had heard about him, whatever they would have read about him, and in the event of some whatever they might have said (or posted).
Get to know the true I and not the noise, said Rodgers, an unusual charm of one of the most recognizable if you polarize one of the best polarizing stars of the league this week -only this week a Wettische website spamed with the results of a survey in which she claimed Steelers fans as NFL player than he had chosen to think about the NFL. -was a player who was for a 21st season with the 21st season for the radio -rad Rado -Rado -Radio -radio -radio -radio -Radio -Inillging whether he was drawn for a 21st season as 21st.
This silence prompted others to fill the vacuum than the saga was on. And while Rodgers learned to turn everything off a long time ago, he did not want to assume that everyone else did it.
“He went through some things a few years ago, and people had judgments and opinions to him,” said the wide receiver Scotty Miller. “He wanted to come in with a clean slate.”
A modest approach
Yes, there is Aaron Rodgers, the willing provocateur who is not afraid to say his opinion on any topic, no matter who looks, and rages openly in Ayahuasca and Darkness Retreat. There is also Aaron Rodgers, the football player who got out with the New York Jets in Pittsburgh after two turbulent seasons because he was for “best for my soul”.
The man who tries to live from “curious, not valuable” after the credo appealed to his teammates – none of them were even in the league when he and the Packers defeated the Steelers in the Super Bowl in the 2010 season – to give him the same respect.
The early returns were an eye opening and refreshing for some.
Instead of standing in front of the line while warming up, Rodgers realizes that sometimes the players who linger on the back are there for a certain reason.
Instead of being interested in the same group in the cafeteria every day, he will always sit down with whom. Instead of dominating every meeting in the quarterback room, he absorbs information from offensive coordinator Arthur Smith and backups Rudolph, Skylar Thompson and Rookie as generous as he finds it.
“It's not wrong,” said Rudolph. “It is not a fake. It is a great example of how it does. They have $ 400 million and they have the whole fame of the world, but they are not (idiot).”
Rudolph was initially unsure and said he didn't know what to believe. But asked what is striking about Rodgers, and the first word that arises in Rudolph's spirit seems to contradict Rodgers' persona: humility.
“To enforce everyone, not to go early, to really take care of, to ask boys (about their lives),” said Rudolph. “You can say that he really loves the game and he loves investing work.”
Perhaps more than that is Rodgers the challenge of combining with players in every part of the squad.
How else can he explain how he bounced up from black to McCormick from black to McCormick in five minutes? Why does his phone light up with texts by the Steelers recipients for all hours? His decision to get a video game controller for the first time in the sluggish nights in the dormitories during the team's annual sabbatical on Saint Vincent College?
“I think Aaron's structure of this type of (important) relationships in our organization,” said Quarterbacks trainer Tom Arth, who was briefly on the Packers squad with Rodgers 20 years ago. “(And) Our boys will go there and they will really play hard for him. And he will also risk it for them.”
Become a “servant leader”
Rodgers used the expression “servant leader” to describe the role he himself fills for a team, which hopes that this season is the last between his former franchise quarters and his neighbor.
What this means depends on who he tries to lead.
The broad recipient Roman Wilson tries to take a step forward after he has published his entire rookie year because of an injury. While there were flashes during the pre -season, Rodgers put it in a nutshell not to miss Wilson from the hook, simply because he made a handful of pieces that scratched the surface of his potential.
After a team -wide film meeting at the beginning of this month, Rodgers pulled the linebacker Patrick Queen aside to give suggestions on how to attack certain looks from the offensive.
“He says:” Hey, some of these calls, I think you should change this and that and that, “said Queen.” He is working on everything for the building. You could no longer ask for a man who comes in his first year in a quarterback, a man who is a Hall of Famer, a guy that we all grew up and like to watch. “
There is a disarming way of Rodgers, from his style, the short four-day break that the players enjoyed in the entire league this weekend, before the regular season began to wear a T-shirt in which “man I work”, who directly in one of these “young homeowners who become their parents”, to an apparently endless care with good, wit, the sheath conversation, which is made of the shop. decades of experience.
Disarmed unbeliever doubts
Those who were initially doubtful have quickly become believers. The security of the Elliott was famous that Rodgers should remain in a “pensioner house” instead of signing the Steelers, and then quickly withdrawn after he has known the man whom Elliott met “now” funny like hell “.
The long -term defensive captain Cam Heyward seemed to take a respectful push while Rodgers thought about his future.
Heyward recently apologized, even if Heyward had to admit in the unusual position that he was taken out of the context in his own podcast.
This is the power of Rodgers' personality, who seems to have found a related spirit in the longest Merten Merten in North American sport.
The Bromance between Rodgers and Mike Tomlin cooked from a distance for years. In Pittsburgh now blooms in full bloom, where two men, who are very sure, have become hope of each other to pour out the franchise from the doldrums, often good but rarely great.
Rodgers called Tomlin to watch how he personally watched “quite special”. It is similar for Tomlin when he talks about his fifth start quarters in week 1 in so many years.
This is Tomlins 19th autumn in Pittsburgh. It is also the first in which the quarterback on the deep card did not record a single live snap in the previous season. Rodgers' CV and the respect that Tomlin has for him, as well as the inherent risk of bringing Rodgers out there if the games did not count, made the decision easy.
However, it also leads to a secret of what is to be expected when Rodgers stepped onto the field in the Metlife Stadium on September 7 to face the same jets team with which he spent two angry seasons, but left an indelible impression even in chaos.
“He only taught us so much in a short time that we can all wear the rest of our lives, the rest of our football career,” said Jets Linebacker Jamien Sherwood. “So he said a lot. I'll say that.”
The missions for a “soccer genius”
The loose room stories that Sherwood tells about Rodgers sound very similar to those who tell the Steelers about the “soccer genius”, as Jonnu Smith recently put it. However, the one in the field in New York had a lot to be desired for everyone involved.
And maybe Rodgers landed in Pittsburgh, perhaps over everything else that corresponds to a six -month experiment instead of finally returning to his personal enclave in Malibu with his dog and his new wife, while he was waiting for the inevitable call from Canton in a few years.
This call will come at some point. At the moment Rodgers is intended to write a more satisfactory coda than threatened to follow him from New York. And although he did not use the word “legacy” when he talked about why he came back, he doesn't have to.
Everyone knows what is at stake in the next five months, the 52 other men on the squad-from the newcomers to the all-pro-pros, the boys at the top and the boys on the back.
“He really has nothing to prove,” said Queen. “And yet he has something to prove at the same time. He could just stop it and still one of the greatest who has ever played. If you see someone who takes care of it so much, she takes care of so much more and you want to go out and play for him.”
Dennis Waszak Jr. in Florham Park, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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