With over 20 years of NFL experience, Aaron Rodgers was eager to share everything he learned with whoever would listen on the Pittsburgh Steelers. We have all heard that, but now Mason Rudolph has provided insight into exactly what that looked like.
“Early in the week, you play the games Sunday, you could just tell,” Rudolph said on The Justin Time Podcast. “I mean he was coming in Wednesday morning with an ultra-high level of understanding. He had self-scouted ourselves the last few games. What are some tendencies maybe [that] were showing up on film. And he had done a lot of homework before he got in there.”
Even at his age, having forgotten more football than anybody on the field had learned, Rodgers attacks his preparation as if he still has something to prove in the NFL. And when the leader in the room is setting such a high bar, the rest of the groups follow. It creates good habits for the team. Habits that could potentially pay off for a generation of Steelers football.
Those habits were enforced by good old-fashioned pop quizzes.
“He took the initiative to have the guys over each and every Tuesday. We’d watch an hour of tape, take a break, go have some food, and then we’d go back into this huge media room and he’d have some notes,” Rudolph said. “He’d talk about maybe some new signals for the week, discarding old signals that he felt like we had shown too much. He would pop quiz the room. ‘What did you think about their starting cornerback on the left side this week? Does he travel? What are their top three coverages so far you’ve seen out of nickel defense? Out of base defense?’
“He wouldn’t rake you over the coals if you got the wrong answer that early in the week, but he sort of set the precedent where he wanted guys to start watching tape on their own.”
This certainly provides context to weekly moments on the field where Rodgers was visibly frustrated with his teammates. The average spectator saw that as a crotchety old veteran who had no patience with his younger teammates and their mistakes. In reality, he earned the right to be frustrated by putting in an inordinate amount of time with his teammates outside of regular business hours.
During one of the NBC broadcasts last season, Cris Collinsworth revealed Rodgers put in extra time with his teammates four nights per week. Collinsworth said that’s the most he’s ever heard of, and he’s been closely involved with the NFL since the early 1980s.
Rodgers didn’t only spend time with the wide receivers. Rudolph said he would go from room to room later in the week and go over a variety of things with the offensive linemen, tight ends, and running backs.
That obsession is a big reason why Rodgers is one of the best of all time, and why he will easily be a first-ballot Hall of Famer five years after he hangs up his cleats.
Younger players picked up on those habits and incorporated them into their own routines. Even if Rodgers wasn’t maliciously enforcing his pop quizzes, nobody wants to be caught without a good answer in front of the whole room.
Reading between the lines, this may have been a big part of how certain players rose to the top of the depth chart so fast. Marquez Valdes-Scantling and Adam Thielen instantly jumped Roman Wilson on the depth chart, for example.
In just one year, and especially if he returns for Year 2, Rodgers’ impact will be felt in Pittsburgh long after he departs.
All the Will Howard praise, especially from Aaron Rodgers himself, starts to carry more weight when you realize exactly what Rodgers put his teammates through on a weekly basis.
In a room like that, Rodgers praise isn’t handed out lightly—it’s earned.
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