PITTSBURGH (AP) — Aaron Rodgers sits in the corner of a largely empty Pittsburgh Steelers locker room on a random afternoon late in training camp.
The day might be over, but the NFL's oldest active player is in no rush to leave.
The four-time MVP stands up and walks over to a nearby trash can, which just so happens to be in front of rookie defensive tackle Yahya Black's stall.
Rodgers turns toward Black — who turned 3 two days before Rodgers was drafted by the Green Bay Packers in the first round 20
years ago — and starts to chat.
Their brief exchange is inaudible. Black's laughter is not.
Rodgers makes his way back to his seat and plops down. He spots Mason Rudolph — who once dreamed of sitting atop the depth chart as Rodgers has for years but now is leaning into the not exactly unpleasant purgatory of career backup — out of the corner of his eye.
Another brief chat. Another burst of laughter.
Mason McCormick, who grew up as a zero-star recruit in South Dakota and will spend this season starting at right guard on an offensive line tasked with protecting a 41-year-old quarterback who doesn't move as he used to, lumbers by. Another spirited back-and-forth.
Yet more laughter.
It's been like this from Rodgers' first day with the club in early June. Not long after signing a one-year deal with the Steelers following months of “will he or won't he?” speculation, Rodgers asked his new teammates to cast aside whatever they might have heard about him, whatever they might have read about him, and in the case of some, whatever they might have said ( or posted ) about him.
Get to know the real me and not the noise, Rodgers said, an unusual appeal from one of the league's most recognizable if polarizing stars — just this week a betting website spammed media with the results of a poll in which it claimed Steelers fans voted Rodgers as the NFL's most annoying player — who that felt was necessary after deciding to go radio silent as he weighed whether to return for a 21st season.
That silence led others to fill the vacuum as the saga dragged on. And while Rodgers learned long ago to tune it all out, he didn't want to assume everyone else did, too.
“He went through some stuff a couple years ago, and people had judgments and opinions on him,” wide receiver Scotty Miller said. “He wanted to come in with a clean slate.”
Yes, there is Aaron Rodgers, the willing provocateur unafraid to speak his mind on any subject, no matter who it might chafe, and openly dabbles in ayahuasca and darkness retreats. There is also Aaron Rodgers, the football player, who alighted in Pittsburgh after two turbulent seasons with the New York Jets because he felt it was “ best for my soul. ”
The man who tries to live by the credo of “be curious, not judgmental” appealed to his teammates — none of whom were even in the league when he and the Packers beat the Steelers in the Super Bowl in the 2010 season — to afford him that same respect.
The early returns have been eye-opening and, for some, refreshing.
Rather than stand at the front of the line during warmups, Rodgers will bounce around, well aware that sometimes the players who linger at the back are there for a reason.
Rather than gravitate toward the same group every day in the cafeteria, he will sit down with whomever to talk about whatever. Rather than dominate every meeting in the quarterback room, he absorbs information from offensive coordinator Arthur Smith and backups Rudolph, Skylar Thompson and rookie Will Howard just as generously as he delves it out.
“It's not phony," Rudolph said. “It's not fake. It's a great example of how to do it the right way. You have $400 million and you have all the fame in the world, but you're not a (jerk)."
Rudolph was initially unsure, saying he “didn't know what to believe." Yet asked what stands out about Rodgers, and the first word that springs to Rudolph's mind would seem to be at odds with Rodgers' persona: humility.
“To sit through all the meetings, not to leave early, to truly care about asking guys (about their lives),” Rudolph said. “You can tell that he truly loves the game and he loves putting in the work.”
Perhaps even more than that, Rodgers embraces the challenge of connecting with players on every part of the roster.
How else to explain how he bounced from Black to Rudolph to McCormick in a span of five minutes? Why his phone lights up at all hours with texts from the Steelers receivers? His decision to pick up a video game controller for the first time in years during the languid nights inside the dorms during the team's annual sabbatical at Saint Vincent College?
“I think Aaron’s building those type of (vital) relationships throughout our organization,” said quarterbacks coach Tom Arth, who was briefly on the Packers roster with Rodgers 20 years ago. “(And) our guys are going to go there and they’re going to play really hard for him. And likewise, he’s going to lay it on the line for them.”
Rodgers used the phrase “servant leader” to describe the role he envisions himself filling for a team that hopes this season is the final one between its previous franchise quarterback and its next one.
What that means depends on whom he's trying to lead.
Wide receiver Roman Wilson is trying to take a step forward after sitting out his entire rookie year because of injury. While there were flashes during the preseason, Rodgers has made it a point not to let Wilson off the hook simply because he made a handful of plays that scratched the surface of his potential.
After a team-wide film session earlier this month, Rodgers pulled inside linebacker Patrick Queen aside to offer suggestions on how to attack certain looks from the offense.
“He's like, ‘Hey, on some of these calls, I think you should change this and this and that,’” Queen said. “He's working on everything around the building. You couldn’t ask for more in a quarterback, especially a guy that’s coming in his first year, a guy who’s a Hall of Famer, a guy that we all grew up watching and love watching.”
There is a disarming way about Rodgers, from his style — he left for the brief four-day break that players across the league enjoyed this weekend before the regular season begins wearing a T-shirt that read “Man, I'm working” that would have fit right into one of those “young homeowners becoming their parents” commercials — to a seemingly endless supply of good-natured smack talk culled from decades of experience.
Those who were initially dubious have quickly become believers. Safety DeShon Elliott infamously posted that Rodgers should stay in a “retirement home” rather than sign with the Steelers, then quickly backtracked after meeting the man Elliott now calls “funny as hell.”
Longtime defensive captain Cam Heyward appeared to take a respectful jab while Rodgers pondered his future.
Heyward recently apologized, even if it left Heyward in the unusual position of admitting he was taken out of context on his own podcast.
Such is the power of Rodgers' personality, one that appears to have found a kindred spirit in the longest-tenured head coach in North American sports.
The bromance between Rodgers and Mike Tomlin simmered from afar for years. It's now in full bloom in Pittsburgh, where two men very secure in who they have become turned to each other in hopes of shaking the franchise out of the doldrums of frequently being good but rarely great.
Rodgers called watching Tomlin go about his business in person “pretty special.” It's much the same for Tomlin when talking about his fifth different Week 1 starting quarterback in as many years.
This is Tomlin's 19th autumn in Pittsburgh. It's also the first in which the quarterback atop the depth chart didn't take a single live snap during the preseason. Rodgers' resume and the respect Tomlin has for him, as well as the inherent risk in putting Rodgers out there when the games don't count, made the decision easy.
It also, however, leads to an air of mystery about what to expect when Rodgers trots onto the field at MetLife Stadium on Sept. 7 to face the same Jets team with whom he spent two exasperating seasons but left an indelible impression even among the chaos.
“He just taught us all so much in a short span of time that we can all carry the rest of our lives, the rest of our football careers,” Jets linebacker Jamien Sherwood said. "So he meant a lot to us. I’ll say that.”
The locker room stories Sherwood tells about Rodgers sound an awful lot like the ones the Steelers tell about the “football genius" as tight end Jonnu Smith recently put it. The on-field results in New York, however, left plenty to be desired for all involved.
And that, perhaps beyond everything else, is why Rodgers ended up in Pittsburgh for what amounts to a six-month experiment rather than retreat to his personal enclave in Malibu with his dog and his new wife for good while waiting for the inevitable call from Canton in a few years.
That call will come eventually. For now, Rodgers is intent on writing a more satisfying coda than what threatened to follow him out of New York. And while he hasn't used the word “legacy” when talking about why he came back, the reality is he doesn't have to.
Everyone knows what's at stake over the next five months, the 52 other men on the roster — from the rookies to the All-Pros, the guys at the front of the line and the guys at the back — most of all.
“He really doesn’t have anything to prove,” Queen said. “And yet he has something to prove at the same time. He could hang it up right now and still be one of the greatest who ever played. Seeing somebody that cares that much, makes you care that much more and you want to go all out and play for him."
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AP Pro Football Writer Dennis Waszak Jr. in Florham Park, New Jersey, contributed to this report.
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