Who is Aaron Rodgers?
It’s a complicated question and one that Netflix and directors Gotham Chopra and Liam Hughes dedicate three hours to answering in Enigma, the streamer’s revelatory new documentary series. Over the course of three episodes — “Becoming,” “Awakening” and “Reckoning” — Rodgers welcomes viewers to draw their own conclusions by inviting cameras into his life in ways that seem unprecedented for an active NFL quarterback. Have you ever seen a Hall of Famer getting high on ayahuasca and contemplating what life must be like for a butterfly as it emerges from a cocoon? No? Yeah, well, same.
Produced by Religion of Sports (co-founded by NFL great Tom Brady), Skydance Sports and NFL Films and Religion of Sports, Enigma tackles the question by tracing Rodgers’ career from being selected as the 24th pick in the 2005 NFL Draft to becoming Super Bowl champ and four-time league MVP. The series also goes deep in revealing what life has been like off the field. After being anointed a superstar with his Super Bowl XLV championship as the quarterback of the Green Bay Packers, Rodgers had a series of high-profile relationships with Hollywood actresses while also confronting a family rift by way of reality TV. In more recent years, he’s become something of a lightning rod in the press for floating conspiracy theories, questioning the NFL’s COVID-19 vaccination policy and pondering a bid for the White House as a potential vice presidential candidate for Robert F. Kennedy Jr.
All of the above is covered in Enigma, which dedicates a large chunk of its running time to his season-ending injury when he tore his Achilles on the fourth play of his New York Jets debut, and the subsequent (and lightning-fast) recovery process. Then there’s his relationship to spirituality and ayahuasca. Viewers not only hear him repeatedly credit the plant-based medicine for his recovery and for helping him become the man he wants to be, but they see him swallowing the liquid during intimate ceremonies as part of a three-night retreat in the Costa Rican jungle. It’s quite a journey, and there are scenes in Enigma that find Rodgers attempting to answer the question himself.
“Who am I?” he asks at one point, mulling over his success and the internal conflicts that came as a result. “Am I the football player? Am I the off-the-field guy? A lot of it is the battle of identity. I was struggling with who I was and who I wanted to be.”
Draw your own conclusions based on 10 highlights from Enigma below.
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Psychedelic Awakenings: “I’m Enough”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix The second episode, titled “Awakening,” focuses largely on Rodgers’ journey with plant medicine, specifically ayahuasca, which takes him to a retreat in Costa Rica where he engages in a trippy and spiritual three-night ceremony. He was joined on the trip by fellow NFL players Jordan Poyer of the Miami Dolphins and former Chicago Bears and San Francisco 49ers star Adrian Colbert. While the episode features appearances by guides and shamans, Rodgers emerges as the leader of the pack in several sequences where he delivers speeches that detail the experience, its consequences and the seemingly higher level of consciousness that comes with hours spent under the influence. “I’m just sitting here reminded of how nothing in life is a coincidence. Think about the reason why you’re here. The journey why you’re here makes no sense, I mean, in the grand scheme of things. All the things that had to happen for you to be here, just in this lifetime,” Rodgers says. “It makes me remember, my life matters. Your life matters. All of this matters. We’re here for a reason to do something special. This is a top-of-the-mountain experience. We’re pushing ourselves to the edge with various medicines. Why? Because my life matters. Because I’ve got a host of ancestors backing me up. I’ve got the unseen world and the whispers of the universe telling me I matter. That I’m enough.”
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“Plant Medicine Has Been a Big Teacher for Me”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix Fame, success, perfectionism and spirituality are running themes in Enigma because Rodgers has wrestled with it all in his personal life. And he repeatedly credits ayahuasca as the key to finding peace with all of the above. “Plant medicine has been a big teacher for me for self-love, to learn how to love myself better,” he says, later adding that he particularly enjoys ayahuasca ceremonies where he’s surrounded by groups of like-minded individuals on the same spiritual journey. “The feeling you get when you can be raw and vulnerable with men is special,” he says, as someone who knows the divide of being an alpha male on the field and a sensitive human being off of it. After the first ceremony in Costa Rica, he describes the experience as “really, really rough” because he was confronted with his darkest, deepest secrets and forced to find ways to love himself in those moments. In one particular moment, he says he heard critical voices telling him that he’s “this” or “that” or a “terrible” person. “It wasn’t until the end,” he says that he realized, “Fine. You win. I’m tired of fighting. Yes, I am those things. And I just said, ‘See, you’re unlovable.’ I sat with that for a while…[But] the medicine said, ‘Why can’t you love yourself? If you don’t believe that you deserve the love, you sure as hell can’t receive it.’”
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Shirtless, Sweaty and “So Thankful I Stuck This Out”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix One of the docuseries’ most memorable scenes comes during the second episode when Rodgers and his ayahuasca pals duck into the Temazcal, an ancient indigenous sweat lodge for a daytime ceremony that is designed as “a symbolic journey back to the maternal womb.” They spend hours in a tented hut as a guide gently places fiery rocks inside as smoke billows out. Rodgers cops to having visions, hearing noises and teetering on the edge of consciousness. There’s plenty of physical discomfort and some puking, too. Once he emerges, sweaty and shirtless, the Hall of Famer says, “I’m going to go in the little creek and be so thankful that I stuck this out.” Rodgers then lays in a puddle of water with his eyes closed as he seeks relief from the physically draining event. On a lighter note, there’s a scene in the same episode that finds Rodgers contemplating what life must be like for a caterpillar as it emerges from a cocoon to become a butterfly. “A caterpillar opens its wings and [is like], ‘I can’t fucking believe this is my life now. I get to fly around. I get to smell flowers,’” he suggests the morning after an hours-long ayahuasca trip in the night. “To live like that? Living your wildest dreams every single day. Nights like tonight show me, show us, what is possible and what life looks like living it to the fullest.”
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A Rough Ride Toward Self-Love and Acceptance
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix Rodgers goes deep by revealing the impact of growing up in a conservative and religious household and how he has spent years wrestling free of the ideology, expectations and rigidity of those structures. “I grew up in a very white dogmatic church and that didn’t really serve me. It was very rigid in structure and I’m not a very rigid person. Shame, guilt, judgment. It was like, ‘We have the truth. Our way or the highway. Our way is heaven, your way is hell.’ Talking to my parents, it was very black and white — somebody has to be wrong, somebody has to be right.” He says he eventually set out on his own spiritual journey after meeting Rob Bell, a pastor and author who came to speak to the Green Bay Packers. They became friends, and that relationship led Rodgers to expand his knowledge base by dipping into books on philosophy and self-help. “I found a courage to speak my feelings better. I started to stand up to institutions of my youth, organized religions, my parents, dogma, ideology. I was questioning all of it,” he says. Ultimately, that searching led him to ayahuasca, which he says he’s done over four trips and nine ceremonies. “It’s the hardest medicine possible that I’ve tried. It’s a deeply intense spiritual journey,” he says. In one scene, he suggests that it’s all been a journey in search of self-love and acceptance because that is something he missed in his youth. “I just wanted to hear, ‘I’m proud of you.’”
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Tackling Public Perception and the “COVID War”
Image Credit: Sarah Stier/Getty Images The third episode of Enigma, “Reckoning,” tackles many of the hot-button issues that have plagued Rodgers in the press in recent years as he’s flirted with conspiracy theories and been forced to defend his COVID-19 status. (During a press conference, he claimed to be “immunized” though he was never vaccinated.) Rodgers fully sounds like he’s at peace with how he’s perceived amid the criticisms that have been continually lobbed against him from all corners of the internet. “It’s the age of outrage and I just don’t resonate with that,” he says. “In the past, I would’ve been fueled by bitterness and resentment, and now I’m definitely trending more towards curiosity and humor than bitterness and resentment. I don’t need to fight the powers that be. I don’t need to find the COVID war anymore, and I do feel detached from that in a healthy way. Not in a judgment way, I want to make that as clear as possible. I don’t know how it’s going to come off but I don’t resonate with that energy. That doesn’t mean I judge the energy. I’m actually super curious about where that comes from and why, and what I’ve learned is that if you can have a healthy detachment from that, energetically. It’s just a passing thought, and a smirk or a smile, and then it’s on to the next.”
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The Netflix Doc That Changed His Perspective on Winning at All Costs
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix During his Netflix docuseries, Rodgers credits another one of the streamer’s nonfiction offerings for influencing his perspective on winning and losing and what it all means. “I watched the BALCO documentary on Neflix and read the book,” he reveals, referencing Untold: Hall of Shame, which investigated one of sports’ biggest steroid scandals. “Everybody in that documentary and book were obsessed with winning. Their only thing was ‘win at all costs.’ Is winning at all costs acceptable? Vince Lombardi had a famous quote that said, ‘Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing.’ Is that true? I don’t really subscribe to that.” He claims that in 20 years, it will be “hard for people to remember who won every single Super Bowl.” Whether or not that is true, he said the title that he won with the Green Bay Packers will always be special. “I’ve said many times that the idea of success and failure is unfortunately tied to winning and losing. That’s not a binary representation, I don’t believe,” he says. “You’re going to play your best sometimes and it’s not going to be good enough. You’re going to play not your best and you might not win. That doesn’t mean that’s not success. And the flip side doesn’t mean it’s failure. I don’t feel like I need to prove anything to anybody but myself at this point, which is a great place to be.”
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Fame Was a Struggle: “I Definitely Hated It At First”
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix Rodgers’ relationship to his celebrity status and the pitfalls of fame fall into focus in the second episode, which finds the football star talking about how winning the Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers in 2010 completely changed his life. “I didn’t do myself any favors with some of the girls that I dated after that that were in the public eye,” he says, referring to a list of love interests that includes Olivia Munn, Danica Patrick and Shailene Woodley. “I definitely hated it at first — really despised it. I enjoyed my private life.” That life evaporated due to the commitments that came as a Super Bowl champ (and MVP), including high-profile appearances and a long-running partnership with State Farm. He also became a target of the tabloids and even won Jeopardy! “[Fame] is not something I ever desired or wanted, other than playing on Sundays.”
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How a “Bullshit Show” Like ‘The Bachelorette’ Deepened a Family Rift
Image Credit: Amy Sussman/Getty Images Rodgers’ younger brother, Jordan Rodgers, was a contestant on the hugely popular reality dating show The Bachelorette. There was a scene in his season that found the season’s title character JoJo Fletcher traveling to the Rodgers’ home for dinner. The family left an open seat for Aaron, which is something he took issue with. “It wasn’t like I was super duper close with everyone in the family,” he explains, adding that there was “stuff from high school that made me feel distant and I was quiet about it.” But then the show turned up the volume on it more than he would’ve liked. “They go on a bullshit dating show. They all agree that this was a good thing to do,” he says, referring to the empty seat at dinner. “A dinner that was during the [football] season, not that I was ever asked to go to [it].” As for the possibility of finding forgiveness one day, Rodgers is optimistic. “People ask me, ‘Is there hope for reconciliation?’ I say, ‘Yeah, of course. Of course.’ I don’t want them to fail, to struggle, to have any strife or issues. I don’t wish any ill will on them at all. It’s more like this — we’re just different steps on a timeline of our own journeys.”
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From the Gridiron to the White House?
Image Credit: Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images Rodgers’ friendship with Robert F. Kennedy Jr. generated countless headlines when it was revealed that the controversial presidential candidate had asked the NFL star to be his running mate as vice president. The docuseries follows the two as they went on a hike in Los Angeles on Feb. 15, 2024. “Have you thought about going into politics,” Kennedy asks Rodgers. The native of Chico, California, says that he got into politics in high school but it wasn’t until he learned more about the assassination of President John F. Kennedy, the uncle of RFK Jr., that the veil was pulled back for him. He doesn’t go into detail about what that really means, but he does say, “I haven’t had an open thought in politics until you announced your candidacy.” Later in the episode, Rodgers reveals that it was after that hike that Kennedy asked him to join the race. He ultimately declined. “I love football and I want to keep playing, and I hated the way last year went,” he says of the season in which he tore his Achilles while playing for the New York Jets. “There’s still some unfinished business in New Jersey.”
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A Hero’s Journey: Rodgers Confronts Aging and Contemplates Football vs. Character Legacy
Image Credit: Courtesy of Netflix In the third and final episode of Enigma, Rodgers confronts some heavy subjects, from aging to legacy. In one scene as he’s driving to Jets practice, the then 40-year-old opens up on what it feels like to be and see his age. “I used to joke about playing 12 years, and thought that would be pretty awesome. I couldn’t believe when I started my 15th season,” he says of his NFL career, which has surpassed expectations. “Then I said, ‘Being 40 and being a starter would be pretty cool.’ Now I am 40, so it’s wild to be in my 20th season just thinking about all the changes over the years, from being a pimple-faced 21-year-old kid who could only grow a little bit of facial hair on my chin to now having to decide whether I want to color my chin hair that’s turning gray. It’s a fun little life arc in the NFL. Knowing this is near the end, I’m really enjoying the journey.” In the episode’s final moments, he investigates what legacy means to him by dividing it into two parts, “football legacy” versus “character legacy.” “We’re all on some level of a hero’s journey that usually involves learning something and figuring out along the way,” he says, noting that it’s character legacy that means the most to him. And staying present along the way. “Life really exists in millions of little moments. So, just can we be present to not miss out on the moments along the way that actually make the journey worthwhile?” As for when his NFL journey will end, Rodgers takes a beat and looks directly into the camera: “It could be the last year, but it could not be.” Sounds like something an enigma would say.