Aaron Rodgers' debut season with the New York Jets got off to a rough start in September when the four-time NFL MVP tore his Achilles on the opening drive of his first game with the team. But Rodgers hasn't been sitting around sulking — the Super Bowl champion has kept busy with his impressive rehabbing, his supportive presence on the Jets sideline and, as I found out at an event in the QB's new adopted hometown last night, designing his first signature watch for Zenith.
Rodgers spent the past 15 months designing a new limited-edition Zenith Chronomaster Sport, and the watch has a number of features that make it distinct from the rest of the luxury brand's most popular line of chronographs — something that Rodgers tells me was by design, as he was involved in every step of the design process and searched for tweaks to the Chronomaster Sport's design language that weren't present in any other references.
The most obvious is the color. Rodgers wanted green, not only because it's the color of his current (and former) team, but also because it was a color Zenith had not yet featured on the Chronomaster Sport. He wanted Arabic numerals on the dial as another first for the line — and they happen to look like jersey numbers, Zenith says — but you'll notice the numbers 3, 6 and 9 do not appear on the dial. That, it turns out, was another idea of Rodgers.
"Do you know the significance of 3, 6 and 9?" Rodgers asked me. I shook my head. "Tesla said if you understand the importance of 3, 6 and 9 you'll unlock the secrets of the universe." So, by omitting this trio of numbers from the dial and effectively replacing them with the three chronograph subdials, Rodgers has given 3-6-9 a sort of "if you know, you know" heightened importance on the watch.
Now, about the watch's shade of green: Is it Packers green, or is it Jets green? I'd say it hews closer to J-E-T-S territory, which was a bit of kismet as Rodgers tells it. "I believe in signs and synchronicities, they happen all around us at all times and if we're just aware of them, they can kind of point us in the right direction," Rodgers said at the event while sharing the stage with Zenith CEO Julien Tornare. "This started 15 months ago when I was still a member of a different organization. When you see the color that we chose, it's actually the color of my new organization."
As for the watch's non-design-related specs, it's familiar Chronomaster Sport territory. It has a 41mm stainless steel case on a matching three-link bracelet, the bezel is in glossy ceramic and the watch is powered by Zenith's El Primero 3600 automatic movement; a high-beat column-wheel chronograph that can measure down to 1/10th of a second.
Just 250 examples of the watch will be available, with each sold in a box that's been signed by Rodgers. The watch will go on sale on November 2 at select Zenith boutiques and on the brand's online boutique and is priced at $12,800.
