Timing Is Everything For Aaron Rodgers As He Enters The 2024 NFL Season

THE BEAUTY IN HIGH COMPLICATIONS

AS AARON RODGERS ENTERS HIS SECOND ‘FIRST TIME’ PLAYING WITH THE NEW YORK JETS, HE REVEALS THE COMPLEX NATURE OF GETTING YOUR CONFIDENCE BACK.

BY ADRIENNE FAUROTE

PHOTOS COURTESY OF ZENITH WATCHES

STYLING TOM SOLURI

GROOMING JULIA DALTON-BRUSH

There is something incredibly freeing about Aaron Rodgers. As I sat down with our Haute Time September cover star, I have to say that, at this point, I have been researching the legendary NFL quarterback for several weeks. I watched his interviews with Pat McAfee (the former NFL punter-turned-sports analyst, comedian, and media personality), understood the stories that made headlines, and studied the Zenith watches he gravitated towards. I was doing my due diligence. Yet, within moments of our conversation beginning, the notes I had meticulously prepared went out the window.

Interviewing Rodgers felt like having a conversation with a longtime friend, a therapist, and a fellow watch enthusiast all at once. Beyond timepieces and journalism, I have a passion for reading energies — and Rodgers has the most liberating and genuine ones I have ever encountered.

The last time Haute Time sat down with Rodgers was in 2021, when he was entering his sixteenth season with the Green Bay Packers, so we had quite a bit of catching up to do. Since then, Rodgers has played two more seasons (nearly reaching two decades with the Packers), has been traded to the New York Jets during the 2023 NFL Draft with a two-year, $75 million guaranteed contract, and has unfortunately suffered an injury in his first season with the Jets.
Fast forward to today, just a few weeks before training camp, Rodgers feels good. “I feel blessed to still be playing football at 40 years old. Being in New Jersey, near New York City, has been a beautiful experience,” Rodgers admits, jokingly adding that the New York Jets should technically be called the New Jersey Jets.

“It’s a new team, a new organization, and new guys to get to know. Although getting hurt in the first game last year was tough, it was a good change. I embraced it and am looking forward to a healthy season this year,” Rodgers continues. Naturally, his recovery after tearing his Achilles tendon is top-of-mind for everyone as the 2024 NFL season approaches.

Despite the complexity of the injury, Rodgers exudes a calm energy. “[The recovery] is multifaceted,” he explains. “I went to, in my opinion, the best doctor in the country, Dr. Neal ElAttrache. NFL running back Cam Akers was his patient a few years ago, and he returned faster than anyone else has ever returned from an Achilles injury — five months. So, I knew I was in the right place. Physically, the rehab was fantastic,” Rodgers adds.

While most would assume that physical healing is the most important aspect of the sport, Rodgers quickly discovered that the emotional side of the injury was just as crucial, if not the hardest part. “With any major injury, it’s always that last little bit of time where you have to regain confidence and overcome fear. There are stages of grief that come with an injury for me — at first, there’s sadness, heartbreak, and frustration,” he reveals. Now, he can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Rodgers is facing his final mental hurdle: regaining the confidence to do all the things he knows he is capable of but hasn’t done in a year. “The last bit of [healing] will happen in a few weeks when I go back to training camp, reconnect with the guys, and have my body respond exactly the way I want it to,” he explains. Another aspect of his journey was the loss of camaraderie with the team as he rehabbed across the country in California. Rebuilding that bond with the team means more to Rodgers than anything.

As he mentioned, recovery is not linear.

In fact, Rodgers has been scrutinized for his alternative healing methods, namely ayahuasca. As a firm believer in exploring different energies to heal the body, I had to ask how these different healing tools have changed his life. “In a lot of different ways,” Rodgers says, laughing as he admits that the answer to my question would take over an hour to discuss (though I wish we had that time). “But I would say that doing ayahuasca, especially, has changed my life for the better. I’ve participated in numerous ayahuasca ceremonies — they are like microcosms of life.”

For Rodgers, life is a big ceremony. “In the week-long ceremonies, there are a lot of high moments, and a lot of difficult moments, but the goal is to find a deeper connection to yourself, to nature, and to the people around you. It’s given me a lot of high doses of self-love, forgiveness, and gentleness — things that have really made a big impact on my life.”

On a deeper level, these alternative healing methods have challenged Rodgers’ ego. “It can be an incredible tool to dive deep into the exploration of self and to deal with self-criticism and all of the different things we tell ourselves — the lies we tell ourselves — to deal with the ego,” he explains. Given his time in the spotlight, I imagine this tool is essential. “You have to learn to find a proper place for the ego, to put it back into the heart and get it out of the head. You turn the ‘observer’ on where you can look at your life from an objective point-of-view to find a deeper connection with yourself and the people in your life.”

Though Rodgers doesn’t necessarily recommend this journey for everyone, at this point in our conversation, I am intrigued — and inspired — by his ability to read his different energies and evolve his perspective based on each specific moment in time.

He continues, “I also firmly believe in the reverent nature that needs to go along [with this practice] — to put medicine in the right place. I have only done ayahuasca with incredible indigenous tribes that have spent their life training from childhood; it’s generational passed down in lineage. I really believe in the sacred nature of medicine and not to mess around with it; it’s not a party plant. There is a time and place for it, and I am thankful for the role it has played in this time of my life, especially the last five years.”

It has been proven over the last several years that these alternative healing methods have helped patients with dementia, PTSD, and more, helping them become a more common practice. Rodgers has taken certain tools from these ceremonies and implemented them into his everyday life, such as ‘Hapé.’

Hapé, a ritual involving a sacred tobacco blend and ashes from sacred fires, is known for its cleansing, grounding, and spiritual effects. “I first became familiar with it years ago, when I was in Peru, but it has since become a weekly practice for me when I need to ground myself. It’s a great tool for getting back into my body when I’m feeling a little worn out; it’s a good way to re-center,” he says. These techniques prove to be efficacious for Rodgers to stay present in time.

Speaking of time, I happen to notice the Zenith Defy Skyline Chronograph on his wrist. It’s no secret that Zenith has been a part of Rodgers’ life for some time now, and I can’t help but draw a parallel between the two as they both enter new chapters: Rodgers is about to restart his career with the Jets, and Zenith have recently welcomed a new CEO, Benoit De Clerck, this year.

As we delve deeper into watches, Rodgers recalls one of his favorite lines from the movie Forgetting Sarah Marshall, “I harken back to the line from when Mila Kunis is talking about not wearing a watch anymore; she says something about how she doesn’t know the point of wearing a watch anymore when everyone has the time on their phone, but I think there’s a classy nature of wearing a watch. There is an heirloom quality to it — passing it down through generations,” he continues, “That didn’t happen in my family, but it’s something I want to pass down myself.”
With his relationship with Zenith, his future children will definitely need to be Chronomaster Sport fans. But for Rodgers, the relationship with Zenith goes beyond the physical watch. “When you endorse a product, you aren’t just endorsing the actual watch; you are endorsing the people who make the company special. Some companies forget that it’s not the name on top of the building or the name at the back of the jersey that makes it special; it’s the people who make it special.”

In fact, it was the people behind Zenith who solidified his love for the brand. “Going to Switzerland and actually meeting the men and women who work at the facility and seeing how much they care is what locked it in for me. The 10,000 hour-rule by Malcolm Gladwell (the rule that it takes 10,000 hours of intensive practice to achieve mastery of complex skills and materials) is very true with these men and women who make the parts of the watches — there’s an expertise that you can’t help but appreciate the beauty of,” Rodgers admits, before getting philosophical about it (‘the Rodgers perspective,’ I like to think of it). “In life, in general, when you meet someone who is super passionate about something and they tell you about it, it draws you into that passion, and you feel connected because someone cares about something so much.”

He also feels connected to the history of watchmaking. As a history buff in college, knowing the history of Zenith drew him closer to the brand. “Knowing how it went through some tough times but persevered based on the courage of a small group of people to save the most important time-making apparatus is pretty cool; they made the movement for another watch company for a really long time because of the expertise,” Rodgers explained, teeming with knowledge. Admittingly, at one point, we joked that he knew so much about Zenith’s complexities that he could work there.
Though he wasn’t wearing it at the time of our conversation, Rodgers’ go-to Zenith is hands down the Chronomaster Sport with the white dial (if he had to pick one to wear for the rest of his life), but he also has an affinity to the 41mm limited edition Chronomaster Sport Aaron Rodgers, with the legendary green dial. “We spent several months working on that collaboration, making decisions on so many small things, so when I saw it for the first time, it was truly meaningful. I helped put that watch together.”

Rodgers actually gifted his limited edition watch to a few important people in his life, like Dr. ElAttrache and his agent, Ed Berry.

Often, we associate timepieces with major life milestones, and for Rodgers, there’s one watch that changed the course of his life forever: the blinged-out Pippo he wore to the 2005 NFL Draft. “That watch meant a lot to me; it symbolized the moment I realized, okay, I am about to be a professional. It’s funny to look back now because I would never wear that watch today (no diamond bezels for me), but it represents a moment in time that changed my life.”

As one of the most introverted extroverts — or extroverted introverts — I have ever met, Rodgers has a sentiment on life that can be summed up in one word: excitement. He is excited for the season ahead, for life beyond football, and even for planning a fall vacation as an adult once his football career ends. “I definitely have a lot of things I want to accomplish [outside of football]—I want to be a father at some point, so that will be a fun chapter,” Rodgers says with a smile.

Rodgers has dedicated over 23 years of his life to football with no regrets, but he looks forward to new chapters ahead. Yet for him, we are all living in the same moment — past, present, and future — it’s just perspective that adjusts your mindset.

Like most, Rodgers looks at time as the most valuable commodity. “I’ve spent so much of my time stewing over things that don’t matter and which, vibrationally, are just distant with my body. I think any time you have experienced the death of a close friend, it’s a reminder of how fast time goes and how finite life is,” he reflects. “So now, I am trying to spend my time with the people who matter most.”

Rodgers has many layers to him as a human being — actually, in technical watchmaking terms, I would categorize him as a high complication — and like high complications, there is so much beauty in the complexity that is Aaron Rodgers.