The Many Faces, Mustaches, and Beards of Aaron Rodgers

A lot of folks have been worried lately about a certain quarterback wearing #12 for the Pack. There are seemingly hundreds of articles breaking down everything from his mechanics, body language, timing, arm strength... blah blah blah. I'm not going to talk about that today (or this morning.. I'm up way too late). Today I'm going to break down a sometimes overlooked part of the Rodgers persona... his ever so important facial hair progression.
In April 2005, Green Bay drafted the young quarterback out of California late in the first round. Some NFL insiders thought that Aaron came off as a little too cocky, as a stud quarterback on the left coast would be presumed to be (see Leinart, Matt). I was intrigued by his quick release and outstanding completion percentage, but was a little dismayed about the pretty boy look that Mr. Rodgers was pushing. You see.. nothing good can come from a guy with a soul patch, except mocha lattes and weed brownies. Especially with a certain incumbent legend's scruff that could clean a rusty grill.
Fast forward a bit, and Favre's grit seemed to rub off as Rodgers was spotted in the preseason rocking a stunning mustache. When asked to explain, Aaron deadpanned that the exquisite lip fur was "a tribute to all the great people in history that had mustaches -- guys like Tom Selleck and Chuck Norris and Jesus and Ron Burgundy." After intense research, I found that he was going for the "Cop 'stache" which can be found on every policeman... umm.. everywhere. It was at this point I realized that A-Rod may just be a cool cat.
Last season, Rodgers pulled out all the stops. Arriving at training camp with a full beard, he cut it down to a sweet Fu Manchu that was stunningly similar to another famous quarterback who wore #12. Several weeks later, the traditional cop stache was back in action, with a hippy homage to Jake Plummer. The world was introduced to Aaron with this look on NFL Network, as he took over for an injured Brett Favre and performed admirably well under the lights in Texas Stadium.
During the offseason, after #4 retired, we were introduced to a clean shaven "Jesus looking" Aaron Rodgers. After much prodding from his mother (mostly due to a wedding he attended), he cut everything off for minicamp which I hope to never witness again. In my opinion, his toughness went down like 50 points. Fortunately for fans of beards everywhere, Aaron returned to training camp in full Grizzly Adams style, until this week when he unveiled my favorite look yet. When asked to described his new look, Rodgers explained "(its) a tribute to the Civil War generals from the mid-to-late 19th century." But it was apparently inspired by a Russian czar. "I was watching ping-pong on MSNBC in the Olympics, and they showed this ad for this TV show which was going to be about Abe Lincoln and Czar Nicholas, who was the last czar of Russia," Rodgers said. "So anyway, Czar Nicholas had this look. So I was laying in bed, I go, 'That's a sweet look.' So I got up, about 10:30 at night, I shaved my chin and said, 'Hey, if the czar can do it, I can do it."
Rodgers went on to explain that the Czar look had an official name. "Matt the trainer and I looked it up on Beards.org, and discovered that it had a name: The 'friendly mutton chops.'"

Bravo, sir... bravo...