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It’s not just understanding his upcoming opponent’s defensive schemes that Aaron Rodgers focuses on during his game preparation, he also puts an emphasis on being able to deliver unique trash-talk as well.
According to ESPN’s Sam Borden, Rodgers, like other starting QB’s around the league, has one of his backups make quizzes about their upcoming opponents. The quizzes consist of actual questions about the defense they’ll be facing that week, but also random pop culture questions and questions about the city of the team they’ll be playing.
While those types of questions are all fine and well, Rodgers also asks his backups to dig up embarrassing information about players he’ll be facing that week so he has original material to trash-talk with.
As an alternative for those who prefer to avoid challenging Rodgers’ general knowledge acumen, Rodgers allows the second part of the quiz to also feature tongue-in-cheek “questions” about top opposing players, as long as there is some component to the question that Rodgers might be able to use on the field. Like everything else, Rodgers wants to challenge the traditional notion of trash-talking — give me something different I can use, he tells the test makers. Find me something new.
Rodgers has been in the league for 15 years now so he knows pretty much all there is to know about all the veterans around the league, but it sounds like he gets his dirt on the younger players from his backups.
This idea of players making quizzes for Rodgers and feeding him with embarrassing dirt is pretty on-brand for Rodgers, and it’s also pretty brilliant. He doesn’t have to spend any time digging up things, instead, he just gets it fed to him by his backups and he gets to deliver the jabs on the field.