Last year, Zenith released a new limited edition Chronomaster Sport with Aaron Rodgers, a Zenith brand ambassador since 2021. Let’s dive into Rodgers’ background a bit. To give an overview of his career, Rodgers is a 10x Pro Bowler, 4x First-Team All Pro, 4x NFL MVP, 2x passing touchdowns leader, 4x passer rating leader NFL quarterback who won Super Bowl XLV for the Green Bay Packers back in 2011, where he was named the game’s MVP.
Rodgers played for the Green Bay Packers from 2005-2022, but didn’t take over the starting job until 2008, when he replaced future Hall of Fame quarterback, Brett Favre. He quickly emerged as one of the league’s top quarterbacks and would go on to defeat the Pittsburgh Steelers in Super Bowl XLV 31-25 at Cowboys Stadium. After over a decade and a half in Wisconsin, Rodgers left the relatively small town of Green Bay and signed a two-year, $75 million deal with the New York Jets following the 2022 season. The Jets have had quarterback after quarterback in recent decades, the most successful of them being Mark Sanchez, who lead the Jets to consecutive AFC Championship games in the 2009 and 2010 seasons. Rodgers’ signing by the Jets immediately gave New York their biggest name at quarterback on the team since Rodgers’ mentor, Brett Favre, played for them in 2008. You could make a pretty easy argument though that Rodgers is the biggest name that’s appeared on a Jets roster since Joe Namath last played in the 70’s.
Unfortunately, as most football fans know by now, Rodgers’ New York debut was less than ideal. The crowd at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, was as excited as could be at the start of the Jets first game of the 2023 NFL season, as this was their first time in years that they had a quarterback that was capable of delivering them a Super Bowl victory. On only the fourth snap of the Jets’ first possession of the season, Leonard Floyd sacked Rodgers, resulting in a torn achilles and what was thought to be a season-ending injury. Some even thought it might be a career-ending injury as Rodgers was 39 at the time and would turn 40 in December. Despite all signs pointing to a lost season and possibly the end of Aaron Rodgers’ career, Rodgers was able to rehab in record time and there was even speculation that he may play the last game or two of the season, almost unheard of for any NFL quarterback that suffered a torn ACL, but especially unheard of for one that had just turned 40. The decision was ultimately made to continue to rest Rodgers for the upcoming season. As we’re only a day away from the 2024 NFL Draft (taking place in Detroit from April 25-27), cautious optimism is beginning to swirl around the New York area again surrounding the dream of Rodgers delivering the city their first Super Bowl win since Joe Namath’s victory at Super Bowl III in 1969.
Having set the stage, we can now turn to Rodgers’ limited edition watch with Zenith. The watch takes the typical Zenith Chronomaster Sport and adds a lot of green to represent the majority green uniforms of both the Packers and Jets. The 41mm wide, 13.8mm thick, stainless steel chronograph features a green ceramic bezel with 1/10th of a second timing graduations. The chronograph pushers do not screw down, so while this watch is water resistant to 100m, you’ll have to make sure not to accidentally press the chronograph pushers when swimming. The watch also features chamfered lugs that give some more visual appeal that continues down to the bracelet with the polished edges of the outer links. Turning to the green dial, we have subdials in anthracite, light grey, and silver, a change from Zenith’s standard subdial color configuration for the model. The Chronomaster Sport inevitably gets compared to the Rolex Daytona, and those comparisons are extremely fair, but as Zenith did supply Rolex with their chronograph movements for over a decade, the two companies have a lot of intertwining history. Is Rolex happy about the design of the Chronomaster Sport? I’m sure they likely aren’t, but the watch exists, Rolex hasn’t legally forced Zenith to stop production of the watch, so let’s just enjoy this watch that’s essentially a Zenith and Rolex mashup. For as much flack as the line gets, and as someone who loves and wears Daytonas, I have to say I honestly really like the Chronomaster Sport. With the discontinuation of the 11 series ceramic bezel Daytonas and the introduction of the 12 series models at Baselworld 2023, which have metal bezels with ceramic inserts, these Zenith chronographs are the only watches that feels as good visually to me as the old 11 series fully ceramic bezel Daytonas. If you really want to know the “incredibly big visual difference” between the Chronomaster Sport and the Daytona? The Zenith has a date.
I mentioned before how we have a green watch for Aaron Rodgers’ two green teams he’s played for, but it seems he might be giving the Packers a little bit of favoritism. It makes sense, considering Green Bay was where he spent the overwhelming majority of his career, but Rodgers shows his Packers pride with partially yellow hands for two of the subdials and the main ten-seconds chronograph hand. Another unique feature about this model is the fact that the Chronometer Sport’s standard rectangular dial indices have been swapped for Arabic numerals, which allows for a 12, Rodgers’ jersey number he wore for well over a decade with the Packers, to be front and center at the top of the dial.
The watch uses the Zenith El Primero 3600, an automatic, 5Hz, column-wheel chronograph movement with 60 hours of power reserve. Zenith has produced what many consider to be the ideal for what a chronograph movement should look like for decades. Rolex opted to use Zenith’s El Primero movement when it came to deciding what should power their Daytona for this very reason. The movement is lightly decorated and features a rotor with a cutout of Zenith’s star logo, while the watch is equipped with a sapphire display back that’s emblazoned with Rodgers’ “AR” logo. The watch comes on a stainless steel bracelet with a folding clasp and additional safety clasp. While the clasp systems do almost look identical, I’ll go ahead and say the Daytona’s clasp and bracelet easily win. Setting my bracelet complaints aside, this is a fun watch that anyone could wear, as there really isn’t any overt Aaron Rodgers or NFL branding. Still, for any Aaron Rodgers fans out there, this watch will be an especially prized piece in a collection. The watch comes in a special, limited edition Zenith box signed by Rodgers himself.
The Zenith Chronomaster Sport Aaron Rodgers is limited to 250 pieces and is priced at 12,800 USD.