Yet there was a time it wasn’t. Do you remember? Do you remember the Green Room?

It was April of 2005 and Rodgers was a smiling kid out of Cal expected to go high in the draft. On that big day, he sported a dark pinstripe suit and perfectly knotted tie. He was ready for his moment. Rodgers took a seat in the draft Green Room with cameras filming his every grin and fidget. There, he sat. And sat. And sat some more.

The Packers picked Rodgers 4 hours and 35 minutes later with the 24th pick. It was one of the more embarrassing Green Room waits in draft history.

“I was starving,” Rodgers joked this week.

It’s stunning the list of players taken ahead of Rodgers, who is now one of the best pure throwers in football. Quarterback Alex Smith, the pseudo bust in San Francisco, was picked ahead of Rodgers.

So were names like Ronnie Brown, Braylon Edwards, Cedric Benson, Cadillac Williams, Pacman Jones, Troy Williamson, Carlos Rodgers, and Matt Jones.

“When it comes to Aaron the NFL mostly got it wrong,” Packers wide receiver Greg Jennings said.

The question is why?

How did the league get it so horribly sideways with Rodgers?

“The only thing I care about is that we got him,” Packers general manager Ted Thompson said.

Rodgers might not be the only quarterback in this Super Bowl who should have gone earlier in the draft. Pittsburgh’s Ben Roethlisberger was selected 11th overall in 2004. His Green Room experience was better than that of Rodgers but he still might have gone slightly low considering the amount of winning he’s done as a pro.

That draft had Phillip Rivers, Eli Manning and Roethlisberger, which is one of the best quarterback classes of all time (the 1983 class of Dan Marino, Jim Kelly and John Elway remains the gold standard).

Teams like Cleveland had a chance to snag Roethlisberger earlier but the Browns picked tight end Kellen Winslow II instead.

It is definitely Rodgers who remains one of the prime examples in league history of just how badly the quarterback evaluation process can be ruined. There are three main theories on why someone of Rodgers’ capabilities slipped through the league’s talent nets.

The Jeff Tedford Theory: The California coach is considered an offensive genius by many but at the time there were some scouts and personnel executives who were skeptical. They thought his system was gimmicky and the gaudy numbers put up by Rodgers were more a product of that system.