ESPN

At first, Green Bay seems like the ideal place to define, once and for all, what it is to be a Franchise Quarterback.

I mean, you can punt a ball in any direction out of the Lambeau Field parking lot and hit something that commemorates one of the all-time greats at the position: to the south, there’s Brett Favre Way; to the east, a massive statue of Curly Lambeau, one of the fathers of the forward pass; to the west, a massive black-and-white banner of Hall of Famer Bart Starr hanging in the atrium; and one floor below, in the team’s Hall of Fame, there’s an entire room dedicated to Aaron Rodgers’ record-breaking 2011 season.

The place is so nuts for QBs that a few weeks ago, I heard a Lambeau Field tour guide tell fans that even though they were about to walk on the same grass surface as Rodgers does on Sundays, they still needed to control themselves and not “lick, pick or eat” the grass.

Rodgers is about as good as anyone in the game at explaining what it is he does. But about halfway through our latest conversation for the cover story in ESPN The Magazine’s Franchise Issue, Rodgers and I weren’t any closer to defining what exactly constitutes a Franchise QB.

“There’s a lot more to it than just playing on Sundays,” Rodgers explained. “There are hundreds of extra hats you have to wear along the way as the face of the franchise. Is it draining? For sure.”

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