If we’re talking about Aaron Rodgers and the Pittsburgh Steelers, that can only mean we’re well into speculation season. The odds of the Steelers signing Rodgers are low — but not zero, perhaps. Once the New York Jets officially cut him loose, we will have to see where the chips fall.
After all, this is a team that targeted two castaway quarterbacks just last year, and who remain their “best” options. But if the Steelers don’t agree on Russell Wilson or Justin Fields — what about Aaron Rodgers? Would they consider it, and under what circumstances might it not be a disaster? Mike Florio speculated on 93.7 The Fan on earlier this week, as he is wont to do.
When a team agrees to a relationship with Rodgers now, one understands that there is more that comes with it than just football. Can Mike Tomlin and the Steelers handle a mercurial quarterback like Aaron Rodgers? Or perhaps more to the point, would his play on the field provide sufficient compensation to deal with it?
“That’s part of the human aspect of any communications you would have,” Florio said, adding that he doesn’t think it is hard for the Steelers or any team to read Aaron Rodgers. He is not exactly a wallflower and has no problem airing his opinions, expressing his beliefs.
But Rodgers, he says, also needs to understand where he is, far removed from his MVP days. The Aaron Rodgers of 2025 — the Aaron Rodgers who would be available for the Steelers — is a 41-year-old man not far removed from a major injury who only showed distant glimmers of his former glory.
“Ultimately, if he wants to keep playing,” Florio posited of Rodgers, “then he better be ready to set some things aside and go along with the program. And the Steelers have a program that has won consistently without him for years. You add him to that, and you do it the right way, he could be a guy that gives the team a hell of a boost. But he has to be willing at this point of his career and his life to have some self-awareness and understand that there are certain things that just aren’t conducive to having a winning team.”
We know that Aaron Rodgers and Steelers HC Mike Tomlin have a certain affinity for one another. Odds are he has some degree of respect for the organization, so similar the Steelers are to the Packers. After a trying two years in New York, coming to Pittsburgh would be all about football and recapturing past glories.
But would both Rodgers and the Steelers be chasing phantoms, or is there something less ephemeral that they might produce? The Steelers haven’t won a playoff game since 2016, Rodgers since 2020. One could argue that he is a better quarterback today than Russell Wilson or Justin Fields. But to take on a 41-year-old quarterback, the Steelers need to believe they are on the cusp. One imagines they believe that of themselves, right or wrong.
