Dallas Before he was a Super Bowl quarterback, before his career passer rating became No. 1 in NFL history, before he became a Pro Bowl selection, before all of that, Aaron Rodgers was just a guy waiting his turn.

It took three years for Rodgers to finally receive the baton from future Hall of Famer Brett Favre - it was thrown to him more than handed - and every minute was an exercise in patience. It turns out, that lull in his ascension from college star to pro star is what made all of this possible.

Take away the years of playing on the scout team, warming up for no reason before games, being a silent partner in weekly quarterbacks meetings, bearing the brunt of the Favre exit, and the Aaron Rodgers about to start against the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV Sunday probably doesn't exist.

"His initiation into the starting role was probably as tough as it has ever been," coach Mike McCarthy said. "He handled it tremendously from a personal standpoint. I think that speaks volumes to Aaron as a person, and that's exciting, because it's all about storms. When you weather storms, you learn from them. You grow from them and it just continues to galvanize him as an individual.

"And I think that's a big part of why he's a special person, alongside being a special quarterback."

To understand how Rodgers got to where he is today, you have to know what he went through to get there.

He had to learn a hard lesson in humility and humbleness, endure a cold shoulder from a legend he admired, learn an offense that was foreign to him, push his body to physical limits, accept he wasn't going to play as long as the legend was there and get better while playing the role of the other team's quarterback.

The lesson in humility began on draft day 2005 when he dropped from the potential No. 1 pick in the draft to No. 24, and had his precipitous fall chronicled on the largest sports cable network in the world. It continued in his first training camp with the Packers when he had to earn the respect of his teammates.

"Aaron probably wouldn't want me to tell this story, but I remember we were in training camp and Aaron got in the huddle to take some snaps and some of the veteran receivers like Donald Driver and Javon Walker were in there," said Terrence Murphy, a second-round pick in '05 and Rodgers' roommate his rookie year. "They told him to get out. 'Get Brett in the huddle.'

"I felt really bad for him that they didn't want to be in the huddle with him. It was just rookie treatment. It was Pro Bowl-type players who didn't want to waste their reps. It was a situation where he had to earn his stripes."

Had those receivers been in the huddle with Rodgers, it's likely they would have found out just how talented he was. In fact, if they had paid more attention in minicamp they might have realized what they were missing.

"His rookie minicamp, that's the best performance of any draft choice I've ever seen," said Seattle general manager John Schneider, who was a personnel analyst for the Packers then. "He was phenomenal."

Unfortunately for Rodgers, it was downhill from there.

Favre felt threatened that the Packers had taken a quarterback in the first round and didn't pay much attention to the rookie. It didn't help that Rodgers came in with the cocky attitude of a top pick who left the University of California a year early after being named first-team all-Pac 10.

Two years later, in a moment of reflection, Rodgers admitted he had handled his first season poorly, that he followed bad advice and tried to sell himself too much instead of letting his play do the talking. Given the legend he was behind, it couldn't have been a worse strategy.

"You come in, you think you have all the answers and you realize all right, new offense, I don't know what I'm doing, I can't make the same plays I made in college," Rodgers said in a lengthy interview before the 2008 season. "There's a guy who's better than me, I need to improve. For me it was obvious, Brett was more talented than me."

Wide receiver Ruvell Martin, one of Rodgers' closest friends on the team during his early years, said he never thought of the quarterback as cocky. He thought of him as confident and competitive, which some construe as overconfidence.

He said Rodgers isn't that different now than he was then.

"He's very competitive," Martin, who plays for the Seattle Seahawks, said in a phone interview this week. "It doesn't matter if it's cards or something else, he's going to be competitive. He's going to want to win. Maybe he's demonstrative, but you have to understand his personality.

"We were playing basketball one year - I won't get into specifics - and he gets all upset over something that happened. That's just him. You don't take it personal. He wants to win. It's almost something you can't help, but you deal with it."

As confident as he was - not unlike the quarterback he was playing behind - he still felt he needed to learn everything he could about the offense. Extremely intelligent, Rodgers watched everything Favre did, followed him around and took note of everything from how he carried himself in the huddle to how he read a blitz.

The only thing he didn't get that first year was personal tutelage.

"My impression was that here's this kid who had a poster of Brett Favre in his room growing up and then he comes in and he's looking for a mentor," Schneider said. "But Brett is at the point in his career where he's like, 'I'm just trying to get through the week, trying to get my body and mind right for the next game.'

"He doesn't have time to do things like that, to take Aaron under his wing."

When asked about his relationship with Favre his rookie season, Rodgers said, "We were kind of work associates."

Favre eventually let Rodgers into his world and the two parted ways in 2008 with no animosity toward one another. Rodgers had soaked up everything he could during those three years together and even now employs things he learned from Favre.

It was during that first training camp that Driver, Walker and others let him know where he stood in relation to Favre, but at one point Driver gave him maybe the best advice he got as a young quarterback.

"He'd have that nervousness about him, and he was always like, 'I have to earn your guys' trust,' " Driver said. "I told him, 'No, it's not about trust, you just have to earn our respect. Once we respect you, you're more than open to get into the huddle.' "

Over the course of that first year and the next two, Rodgers started to earn some of that respect by using every practice opportunity to improve himself. Favre almost never gave up more than a snap or two with the No. 1 offense and so Rodgers was continually imitating the opponent's quarterback on the scout team.

Those practices were his games.

"I remember there were other guys who weren't necessarily going 100% against the defense, just kind of running and giving the defense whatever look they wanted," Martin said. "They weren't fighting for the ball or going the extra mile.

"That really bothered Aaron. If he didn't have a good day running the scout team, that's all he had. It was really serious."

The week of every game, Rodgers would study as though he were going to start and then go out and throw routes with Martin before the starters came out for warm-ups. It was their ritual for three years, and when Martin one time found out he wasn't suiting up, Rodgers came in and demanded he come out and run routes anyway.

Through his actions, and not his words, Rodgers began to earn the respect of his teammates. He became known for his competitiveness in practice and unwillingness to accept anything less than full effort.

"I remember when Aaron used to pick us apart, pick that defense apart because he was so good at it," Driver said. "When he decided to use his feet, it was like, 'OK, this is practice, you can't run.' When he felt pressure, he took off. When he didn't, he sat in the pocket and threw the ball.

"I think that's when I realized he was going to be a great player. He just needed his opportunity."

It was during an off-season trip in 2006 to quarterback Doug Pederson's golf tournament in Monroe, La., that Driver and Rodgers had a long conversation and began their long friendship. Rodgers continued to persevere and get himself prepared for the day he would be the starter, but playing time was practically nonexistent.

He finished out a dreadful game against Baltimore in '05 and yet another drubbing against Philadelphia in '06, then broke his foot and was lost for the season when he replaced an injured Favre in a whitewashing at the hands of the New England Patriots.

It wasn't until '07 that the guy who had bided his time with practice squad Super Bowls finally displayed some of the ability general manager Ted Thompson felt he had when he drafted Rodgers. It was in a game in this very town, against the Dallas Cowboys, that Thompson and McCarthy's belief in him was verified.

In relief of an injured Favre, Rodgers completed 18 of 26 passes for 218 yards and a touchdown in a near come-from-behind victory. Within three months, Favre announced his retirement and within six months started a drawn-out affair in which he tried to get his job back, in so doing turning Rodgers into a villain to some Packers fans.

Rodgers survived the ordeal, and all the while the Dallas game was carved into the organization's consciousness.

"It gave our offense a lot of confidence, because they knew we wouldn't miss a beat if Aaron had to play, and it really gave him a lot of confidence," McCarthy said. "It just really justified all the work that he had put in, it justified (off-season) quarterback school, his development and so forth.

"And every quarterback needs that. I talk about the ladder all the time in developing quarterbacks. You have to take it one wrung at a time, and that's a big step for any quarterback, to get in an NFL game."

If you were curious how Rodgers got to this place, now you know. He matured as a quarterback, grew into a leader and bided his time until it finally became his turn.

"Tom Silverstein" wrote: