Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers is trying out a new job this offseason, and he’s preparing for it as obsessively as he does his regular one.
Rodgers will serve as the guest host of “Jeopardy!” for a two-week stint, and his episodes will begin airing Monday, April 5. The veteran quarterback is a huge fan of the show, and he suggested he prepared for his hosting stint as intensely as he’s prepared for any NFL game.
“I watched hours and hours and hours of episodes,” Rodgers told ESPN’s Rob Demovsky on Friday. “Luckily Netflix has a few seasons, and I went back to DVR. But I had to watch from a different perspective — from Alex (Trebek)’s perspective. I couldn’t watch it as a fan anymore.
“I took pages and pages and pages of notes. I wrote down every affirmative that he said to any type of clue. I wrote down how he would respond if they didn’t get it right. I wrote down beat points of the show. I wrote down all the different ways he would take it to break. I wrote down the stuff that he said coming out of break. Literally, I studied for this like no other. I wanted to absolutely just crush it.”
Rodgers suggested that his level of preparation came as a pleasant surprise to the show’s producers and executives.
“So we get into the first game, the first run-through, there’s 30 questions in a Jeopardy round, and after the first 15 questions, we go to break. They say it in your earpiece, ‘Take it to break.’ So I take it to break, and there was a pause, and I think everyone was like, ‘Whoa, OK, this guy kind of knows what he’s doing here.’
“One of the head producers said as much. She was like, ‘I’m just so appreciative of your approach.’ And my whole thing was I felt like the best way to honor Alex’s memory was to be so dialed in and so ready, and that’s the approach I took. So I was ready to rock and roll.”
Rodgers is a huge “Jeopardy!” fan and has never made any secret of that. He even took part in one of the show’s celebrity tournaments in 2015 and said meeting Alex Trebek was one of his biggest highlights. Combine that fandom with the level of preparation he’s used to undertaking as an NFL quarterback, and it’s no surprise he went all out for this.
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