On Aug. 15, on a practice field in Charlotte, Aaron Rodgers had one of his best moments of training camp. Only for this one, he wasn’t throwing or running. He didn’t even have a football, or so much as a film clicker, in his hand, either.
The New York Jets had just finished their joint practice with the Carolina Panthers, and his former teammate (and Rock Hill, S.C.’s own) Tori Gurley came over to catch up with him. Gurley was on the Packers’ practice squad in 2011 and stuck in Green Bay through camp in ’12. He was a receiver then, there for 13 months, and never caught a ball from Rodgers in a regular-season game.
Gurley had come over, in part, just to thank Rodgers, who had encouraged the receiver—as he struggled to find a place in the NFL—to keep thinking positively about himself. Gurley hung around the NFL a few more years, and played a couple of seasons in Canada after that.
Then, Gurley FaceTimed his wife and young son, T.J. Rodgers smiled recalling it.
“Tori is a name nobody remembers, but he was in Green Bay for a couple years, and he said something really special about a comment I made that, to me, wasn’t an earth-shattering comment, just an encouraging word to him that he said stuck with him,” Rodgers said, leaning back in his chair a few days later, inside the Jets’ fieldhouse. “Moments like that remind you how special these things are.
“I’ve said this to a lot of guys, and they’ll understand it when they’re 40, not in their mid-20s—20 years from now, you’re going to be talking about the pranks and the jokes and the road trips and inside jokes that you had. . You’re not going to be talking about the scores or the stats or whatever. If you win a Super Bowl, you’ll talk about that run, but it’s the relationships that make a difference.”
Rodgers is, in fact, 40 now.
He doesn’t have to be here, sitting in this chair, on a fall-like August day about a month into training camp. He’s made almost $350 million for playing football and however much else in ancillary income off the stardom the sport brings him. As his June trip to Egypt showed, and as he’s illustrated so vividly with his own words, he has interests outside of his place as a professional athlete.
So he could be anywhere he wants, on any terms he wants. Yet, he’s here, which might be what everyone is missing about the Aaron Rodgers story as it heads into its 20th season.
More than just that, after what he’s gone through the past 12 months, he couldn’t be happier to have his roller-coaster life parked right where it is, in Florham Park, N.J. It’s another shot, of course, at a second Super Bowl title, with a loaded team, 14 years after his first one. But just as much, it’s getting the chance to get on those tracks one more time, with guys who aren’t much different than Gurley was all those years ago, that has him as ready as he’s ever been.
