Aaron Rodgers and Sauce Gardner appear to have hit it off as Gang Green teammates — and have a special handshake to prove it.
The veteran quarterback and second-year corner were spotted at Tuesday’s Jets practice having a joint session to practice their latest secret greeting, which mimed them smoking marijuana.
While the 39-year-old Rodgers is clearly not affected by glaucoma — he made several throws that caught teammates’ eyes — he was not a full participant within the session after tweaking his calf last week.
Rodgers and Gardner also went out to dinner and attended a Knicks playoff game together in May, during which the young cornerback didn’t know who actress Jessica Alba was.
“Once we were getting seated, [Rodgers] was just picking on me slightly bit for being young,” Gardner told reporters on Wednesday. “We were getting seated and he was like ‘we’re about to take a seat by,’ what’s her name? ‘We’re about to take a seat by Jessica Alba,’ and I’m similar to ‘Oh, I don’t know who that’s.’ And he just checked out me, he checked out me like I’m crazy.”
Rodgers, entering his nineteenth NFL season and first not as a member of a Packers.
“It’s a distinct vibe,” linebacker C.J. Mosley said. “He sets the bar. He sets the expectations together with his resume, together with his name and the best way he approaches the sport each day.”
The QB, a self-proclaimed hippie, has acquired a well known fondness for the likes of darkness retreats and doing ayahuasca, claiming the psychedelic drug led to his “best season” in 2021 and helped him learn to “love himself.”
“To me, one in all the core tenets of your mental health is that self-love,” Rodgers said on the Aubrey Marcus Podcast in August 2022. “That’s what ayahuasca did for me, was help me see how you can unconditionally love myself.
“It’s only in that unconditional self-love, that then I’m in a position to truly have the option to unconditionally love others. And what higher strategy to work on my mental health than to have an experience like that?”
Since coming to the Jets in an April trade, Rodgers has endeared himself to his latest teammates, including the likes of Gardner, who’s 17 years his junior.
It seems the 2 are still finding things they’ve in common.