It now feels like an eternity since Mike McCarthy served as the head coach for Aaron Rodgers and the Green Bay Packers. To be exact, it has been 13 long years since McCarthy parted ways with the Packers in a rather unceremonious manner.

Now that it's been over a decade, Rodgers had nothing but kind words for his former coach. Despite the ugly divorce McCarthy had with Green Bay, it is clear that Rodgers still holds his former coach in very high regard:

“I think time always can be a great healer, not that there needed to be a lot of healing in our relationship,” Rodgers told Matt Schneidman of The Athletic. “There was always so much love. The things I always appreciated about Mike was I could come to him with an issue or he could call me up to the office with an issue and we could have really, really direct conversations. And it could be voices raised or it could be super calm or anywhere in between, but always at the end of it, every single time, there was always a hug, an ‘I love you. I appreciate you. Thanks for this conversation.'And it taught me a lot about conflict management dealing with Mike, and not to say we had conflict all the time because that wasn’t the case, but I always appreciated the way we were able to talk to each other because it was direct and it always ended on a high note.”

There's obviously a lot of love between the pair, and there's no denying that Aaron Rodgers holds a lot of dear memories of his time together with McCarthy. These two get to rekindle an old flame on Sunday when they face off for the first time as opponents. McCarthy is set to return to his former stomping ground in Lambeau Field as the Packers host his Dallas Cowboys in their Week 10 matchup.

For his part, Rodgers could not help but look back at the circumstances that led to McCarthy's firing back in 2018. This was after the Packers gave him the axe following a stunning 20-17 loss against the Arizona Cardinals in December of that year.

“It was definitely tough to end that season the way we ended it and to be s***ty and to have Mike fired and Joe (Philbin) become the interim,” Rodgers continued. “And I did get a chance to drop off something that I made for him that was really meaningful to me for Christmas that year, and that’s kind of how we ended off in 2018. Then obviously he was around town kind of doing his off year, and all that’s to say, I think time for both of us, and hopefully for our fan base, and then obviously the time away from it, me kind of in my offseasons, doing my journeys with ‘aya' (ayahuasca) especially and then him with his time off as well from coaching, just gives me a greater appreciation. And I feel like him as well, for the time we spent together, just kind of deepened that love.”

Rodgers then went into a deeper and more philosophical reflection on his relationship with McCarthy as he compared it to his controversial use of the plant-based psychedelic ayahuasca. Naturally, the Packers superstar just had to remind all of us about how he won a Super Bowl with McCarthy in Green Bay:

“This may not be an analogy that resonates with everybody, but I do feel this way,” Rodgers said. “There’s a saying when you sit with a plant medicine that when you sit in ceremony, you’re kind of bonded for life and we used to always say, ‘When you win a Super Bowl together, you’re bonded for life.' And when I see those guys I played with in 2010 and when I see the coaches that were on the staff, when I see Mike, when I talk to Mike, there’s just always something that’s gonna keep you together because you won that thing together and you went through the adversity to overcome it to win a world championship. That’s always gonna connect us and bond us, and with time, it’s just increased the greater gratitude that I have for him, the time we spent together, the love I have for him and the appreciation for what he meant to my career.”

As Aaron Rodgers said, not everyone is going to like his chosen analogy, but at the end of the day, you can't fault the man for how much appreciation he's showing McCarthy here.

All of this love will be set aside temporarily on Sunday as Rodgers and the Packers look to turn their season around with a win against the 6-3 Cowboys.