Brooke Pryor
PITTSBURGH — William Parker was the first person to greet new Steelers quarterback Aaron Rodgers as Rodgers pulled into the team facility just after 7:15 on Tuesday morning.
Wearing a black suit and shouting through a megaphone encased in dollar bills, the Pittsburgh native and longtime Steelers fan called to Rodgers as he exited a gray Range Rover.
“Aaron, you broke my heart in the Super Bowl, but I forgive you,” Parker said. Rodgers laughed and waved at Parker, who paced on the sidewalk beside the parking lot, darting between the bushes and bars of the black fence to get a video of the 41-year old quarterback.
Parker, though, wasn’t just there for Rodgers. The 40-year-old has been greeting players at mandatory minicamp for the past five years with his “money megaphone” and posters, cheering on the players and imploring them to get involved in the local community.
Though Rodgers is a polarizing figure — one Parker previously associated with the heartbreak of the Steelers’ loss to the Green Bay Packers in Super Bowl XLV — Parker was optimistic the quarterback could help bring a seventh Lombardi Trophy to the team’s trophy case.
“I definitely think other players are going to play up to a certain level because they know they have a four-time MVP playing for the Steelers,” Parker said.
While Parker packed up his gear on the sidewalk, inside the building, Rodgers wasn’t waiting until a Week 1 showdown with the Jets to set the tone for his Steelers tenure.
It took more than 70 days between Rodgers’ March visit to the Pittsburgh facility and his signing, but in the interim, he remained in contact with coach Mike Tomlin as well as offensive coordinator Arthur Smith and general manager Omar Khan. The delay in making his final decision, Rodgers told the trio, was tied to matters in his personal life. The Steelers “gave him space and respect” during that time, one team source told ESPN, and it helped endear them to Rodgers.
“The rapport that fell in between me and Mike made it to where, as I was going through my personal stuff, there wasn’t any other option for me,” Rodgers said. “It was here or not play.”
With the situation around his personal matters “improved,” according to Rodgers, as the team wrapped up its second week of OTAs and approached mandatory minicamp, discussions between the two sides intensified the morning of June 5, according to one team source. The Steelers, though optimistic throughout the process, finally began believing that the deal would actually come to fruition. By Thursday night, Rodgers and the Steelers agreed to terms to end the lengthy courtship.
“I didn’t want to shortchange the guys and sign but be elsewhere mentally or physically,” Rodgers said. “Until I could be here and be all-in, I needed to take care of my business.”
Shortly after Tomlin opened the team meeting at 8 a.m. Tuesday, Rodgers stood up and relayed the same sentiment to his new teammates.
“That was the main message: He’s all-in, ready to go from now on,” center Zach Frazier said.
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When Rodgers first arrived at the facility, he asked quarterbacks coach Tom Arth if he could have the playbook printed out. An old-school guy, Rodgers said he prefers taking notes with pencil on paper printouts of the offensive installs rather than using a tablet. Arth relayed the request to administrative assistant Chrissy Bulger. Prior to Rodgers’ first offensive meeting, Bulger assembled a binder and also included a pouch of pencils, erasers and highlighters.
“After the meeting, Aaron came and asked, ‘Did you say Chrissy put this together?'” Arth said. “He went over and first he thanked her for putting it all together, and he gave her back the pencils and the pen and the highlighters and said, ‘I already bought my own. And I don’t want you to have to order any more.’
“It was just a very thoughtful way to introduce himself to Chrissy and start building that relationship. That definitely stood out to me.”
Though Rodgers signaled to the organization he was all-in by signing his contract and reporting to minicamp, he didn’t immediately take on a full complement of duties in practice. That was Tomlin’s idea, Rodgers said, as the quarterback acclimates to the organization and the offensive scheme.
“A lot of this stuff is stuff I’ve done before, but there’s new terms and new types of motion words and different stuff,” Rodgers said. “I’m learning. I’m going to go through the individual stuff. I told Mike, if he wants me to practice, I’ll practice, but I think he said he just wants me to stick to the individual [work] until I’ve got the offense down.”
Rodgers largely went fourth behind Mason Rudolph, Skylar Thompson and Will Howard during the individual quarterback drills in his first two days. During team periods, he watched from behind the play, studying the practice script and chatting with Smith, Arth and offensive assistant Matt Baker.
“I just want to be a servant leader here,” Rodgers said, “and just pass on the knowledge that I have for 20 years, the experience and just try and fit in with the guys, get to know ’em, let them get to know me and just enjoy the process.”
Between periods in Tuesday’s practice, players approached Rodgers with hands extended. Rookie outside linebacker Jack Sawyer, 18 years Rodgers’ junior, was among those who made the midpractice handshake introduction.
“That’s one of the quarterbacks you grow up watching and emulating in the front yard, throwing the football when you’re a little kid,” Sawyer said. “And now being here in my rookie year and having him as my teammate is pretty surreal. And what’s funny is, my grandma growing up was a huge Packers fan and loves Aaron Rodgers, so she’s probably called me 10 times in the last week to ask me how he is and what he is like.”
Sawyer’s best friend and Ohio State teammate Howard wondered the same thing before he met Rodgers over the weekend. And he was surprised by his first impression of the star quarterback.
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“You would think he’s this big-time famous guy — everybody knows Aaron Rodgers, but he’s super down-to-earth and not at all what you would expect,” Howard said. “And just super personable in the last day that I’ve been talking to him.”
After he finished his first practice, Rodgers stood in front of a Steelers-logoed backdrop beside the practice field and addressed a fleet of cameras and a horde of media members, comparing the whirlwind day to the first day of school.
In reality, the three-day mandatory minicamp was more like an extended meet-the-teacher night before the start of the school year. Rodgers won’t be back around all of his teammates until the Steelers report to training camp in Latrobe, Pennsylvania, on July 23, and he isn’t likely to return to the practice facility until camp breaks in mid-August. In the interim, though, he has a summer reading assignment — his playbook — and will perhaps partake in a throwing session or two with his new teammates.
“I’ve just got to try to convince them to come out to Malibu [California],” he said with a sly grin. “It’s going to be a tough sell, I think, a tough sell.”
NFL reporters Jeremy Fowler and Dan Graziano contributed to this story.
